Many students that go to primary and secondary schools get there by boarding their respective school bus, of which the driver of that bus picks up all the students on their route and drops them off at school in the morning, and then in the afternoon, picks them up at school, and then drops them back off. In order to be a school bus driver, the driver has to have a commercial driver's license, as well as a good record of driving, has to carefully pick up and drop off students, as well as to carefully navigate though neighborhoods, and somehow, that bus driver has to maintain order within the bus and not lose focus while driving the streets of that community.
Unlike school teachers, bus drivers are paid by the hour, in which, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, as reported by chron.com indicates that bus drivers earned a "median annual salary of $32,660 in 2016." Another factor to take into consideration is that when school bus drivers' drop off the students in the morning, they often have a rather lengthy unpaid break, before the afternoon run to return the students back to their homes. For some of those drivers, that break is utilized as their own personal time, whereas others may double as a bus mechanic, or work janitorial at the school, or in the cafeteria, in which each of these jobs does compensate the school bus driver for those hours worked.
One might think, that in order to augment school bus driver's salaries and opportunities, that school districts would make it their policy to see that opportunities within the school, were structured in such a manner as to specifically try to accommodate school bus drivers in their employment and ability to make additional wages, especially to try to get them to the forty hour mark, and in particular taking in consideration that when schools are closed in the summer and on school holidays, that these school bus drivers are not being paid for work, since they are hourly employees and are not salaried.
While it is quite common for teachers to be unionized, there are far fewer school bus drivers that are, in which, being unionized would allow these drivers to negotiate better pay packages for a job that is both vital and necessary. Additionally, healthcare packages should be designed for school bus drivers that accommodate drivers that are currently considered to be part time employees, because, through no fault of their own, they have not labored the required amount of hours to be designated as full time and therefore are denied fulltime benefits, even though they did their job, by driving the students to school, and then driving them back home.
We live in a visible and an invisible world, in which too often, those that perform tasks behind the scenes, such as cooks, janitors, maintenance people, and bus drivers, aren't recognized nor really properly appreciated for their human services so provided, yet they should be, for they are part of the overall organization that helps and benefits these students so that they can learn to be good valued citizens, themselves.