Standing room only on some DeKalb school buses

School buses aren’t supposed to be so crammed that youngsters have to stand in the aisle. But that’s happening in DeKalb County, drivers say, with some children standing all the way to school while others pile up three or four to a seat.

School district administrators are working on the problem, adding some routes and changing others. But hiring drivers, always a challenge for metro Atlanta school districts, hasn’t kept up with the number of vacancies DeKalb still has.

The problem came to Superintendent Steve Green’s attention for the first time, he said, when drivers attended a school board meeting with complaints about a proposed pay increase they say didn’t do enough for them. Their concerns went beyond pay, though.