With funding questions and virtual classes, this Whatcom district lays off its bus drivers
The Ferndale School District has laid off its 43 bus drivers — for now — because its students will start the school year at home due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The layoffs go into effect Tuesday, Sept. 1, the school district announced.
The first day of school for the district and its roughly 4,800 students is Wednesday. They will start the school year with online distance learning, as are the students in all of Whatcom County’s K-12 public school districts.
“This is gut-wrenching. Delivering this news is very sad for me and for all of us in the Ferndale School District. The reality is that we just don’t have students to transport so we don’t have work for our bus drivers,” Superintendent Linda Quinn said in a prepared statement.
“I want our staff and community to know that we see these as temporary layoffs,” she said.
Ferndale officials said the decision was based on how the state pays for those who provide transportation, saying they do so differently than for other employees.
“School districts receive funding based on ridership — a function of the number of miles driven and the number of students transported. Last spring, the state made an exception and continued to pay for drivers even if they were doing other work. That exception no longer exists,” the district said in a statement announcing the layoffs.
The Ferndale School District isn’t the only one facing the issue, which is a statewide concern.
Superintendents in King and Pierce counties, which have 430,000 students in them, have asked state legislators to change that funding model, saying that bus drivers may not be transporting students but they’re still needed to deliver educational materials as well as food to students, according to the Tacoma News Tribune.
The Edmonds School District also has laid off its 175 bus drivers, according to King 5.
In Ferndale, bus drivers also provided other services, including delivering meals to students, according to district spokesperson Erin Vincent.
“Last spring, we were able to have drivers do other work such as this. However, our ability to get funding for activities other than transporting students no longer is allowed,” Vincent said to The Bellingham Herald.
The school district will continue to prepare meals for students who need them this school year, with families arranging to pick up their meals at various locations, according to the district’s website.
Ferndale is the second-largest school district in Whatcom in terms of student population. Voters living in its boundaries turned down an operations levy in February. They are being asked to reconsider their decision in the Nov. 3 election, while the district went ahead with its plans to cut 102 positions.
“While these layoffs were not directly connected, the failure of the levy has put additional pressure on all of our finances,” Vincent said of the impact on the district’s bus drivers.
Bellingham Public Schools, the largest school district in Whatcom with about 12,100 students, hasn’t laid off its 65 drivers but also would like a funding change.
“We are watching the situation closely and are working with our labor partners to communicate the realities of the state’s transportation funding model to our employees,” Bellingham schools spokesperson Dana Smith said to The Bellingham Herald.
“We are hopeful that the governor and the legislature will make changes to this funding model to ensure districts have revenue so that drivers are ready to roll when we start coming back in person,” she said.
Smith said the drivers for the Bellingham district might not be transporting its students but they could help by “supporting meal delivery and distribution, books and school supply distribution, technical equipment support and other needed functions within the district as we launch this unusual school year.”
The district’s students will start the school year on Sept. 8 with distance learning.
