Wilson County Schools hope two incentives will help attract and retain school bus drivers as the district continues to suspend routes due to a driver shortage.
First, the district plans to address the top complaint from drivers, which is bad behavior by the students who ride the bus.
"Drivers will be able to download an app and at the end of their route they can fill out an incident report," said Wilson County Schools spokeswoman Jennifer Johnson.
The app will allow principals to send follow up reports back to the drivers letting them know what disciplinary action was taken.
"There's been a communication gap sometimes where the principal may handle something, the driver never knows about it, and of course that lowers morale because they think the kids are just getting away with it," Johnson said.
The district also plans to offer drivers a $3 per hour raise, which still needs to pass a formal vote by county commissioners.
"We found another line item in our budget and moved that money to this," Johnson said. "Certainly we think the three dollars per hour will help. but what we'd love to see is the county commission match those funds, so we could offer a six dollar raise."
Johnson said the district needs to hire about 30 drivers in order to be fully staffed.
