Bus driver shortage makes it harder to get child care in one Johnson County city
The fallout of the ongoing bus driver shortage in schools around Kansas City is now limiting families’ child care options in at least one district in the metro.
For the first time in 21 years of operating, Day Brook Learning Center won’t be offering its afterschool care program.
A recent change means only two out of the five elementary schools in Spring Hill will bus students to Day Brook, which means fewer kids will be able to attend — limiting the center’s clientele, said Dana Broockerd, Day Brook’s owner and director.
“It doesn’t pay me to pay a teacher who wants a decent salary to watch two or four kids. We have availability, we don’t have transportation,” she said.
Day Brook sits on the south side of Spring Hill and is the only staffed and licensed day care facility that serves the growing community. While the YMCA offers afterschool programs for Spring Hill students, Broockerd could serve 22 additional students during a time in which parents are scrambling to find child care for their kids.
Johnson County is only meeting 55% of its child care needs, with 14,702 additional slots needed to serve everyone, according to Child Care Aware of Kansas — a nonprofit that collects data and information on child care in the state. Wyandotte County is short 6,528 slots.
Of the 728 facilities in Johnson County, there are 154 preschools and school aged programs. More than 32,000 children have parents who are in the work force and need child care support.
Like many parts of western Johnson County, Spring Hill has seen rapid growth in recent years. In 2004, when Broockerd opened Day Brook, the city’s population sat just above 4,000 people.
Nearly 20% of the city’s population is under 9 years old — with 10% under 5 — according to 2023 Spring Hill data.
Despite child care needs, the ongoing bus driver shortage limits how far the drivers can go.
With Day Brook in the south and a lot of Spring Hill’s development in the north, it’s too much to have the drivers go out of their way for only a few kids on each bus, Spring Hill Schools Superintendent Dr. Link Luttrell said.
“That’s a whole different animal because we have students, we have to transport them home. Do we force them to have a longer ride?” Luttrell said. “I know it seems easy on the surface, but there are a lot of variables that come into play.”
But losing those 6 to 8 children from the other other schools that no longer bus to Day Brook hit Broockerd’s business hard.
Purchasing a van to transport the students herself isn’t an option, she said. With 23 employees and 12-hour operations, tuition costs circle back to paying salaries and keeping the lights on in her building. As of April, Broockerd was debating on closing summer programming, too.
“I have half a building empty when 20-something kids could come here,” she said.
Metrowide bus driver shortages
Bus driver shortages have plagued other school districts across the metro in recent years in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Many Kansas City area districts struggled to attract and retain more bus drivers, despite offering bonuses and incentives.
In 2023, Olathe school board officials eliminated 25 bus routes for 2,100 middle and high school students who live within 2.5 miles of their schools. Nearby, Blue Valley school officials considered similar route cuts — possibly eliminating 10 routes for more than 700 middle and high school students.
In 2024, Olathe voted to change school start times so that bus drivers could take on more routes — a contentious debate that had several parents raising concerns along the way.
Starting this school year, start times have high schools starting first at 7:40 a.m., followed by middle schools at 8:20 a.m. and elementary schools at 8:55 a.m. High schools would end the day at 2:40 p.m., followed by middle schools at 3:20 p.m. and elementary schools at 3:55 p.m.
On the Missouri side, the Raytown school district was forced to cancel bus routes about 11 times per month during the 2021-22 school year and made similar decisions during its 2022-23 school year. The Independence school district announced a similar predicament — it had been unable to fill enough bus driver positions and had to make cuts to its routes.
Even as districts attempt to stretch the current resources, if someone calls out sick or if there are extracurricular activities, it can further strain the system, Spring Hill schools superintendent Luttrell added.
“That’s why a lot of districts have been very innovative,” he said.
Spring Hill child care transportation
Unlike Olathe’s rolling start times, Spring Hill is able to do a single-tier system where one bus can serve a building, and all of its schools have a start and end time within five to 10 minutes of each other.
“That’s unheard of,” Luttrell said.
The bus routes are based on attendance zones for each school. Two schools — Spring Hill and Dave Creek elementary schools — hit Day Brook within the routes.
The district discussed a separate child care route to bring kids to their centers but ultimately decided they couldn’t swing it with the shortage.
“Some days it is really a challenge to have enough drivers to cover our basic routes to get our kids home,” Luttrell said.
But Luttrell acknowledged the need his community is seeing around child care as the area’s population continues to grow. Spring Hill is expecting enrollment to increase by 950 students in the next five years — with the need for more child care and afterschool programs growing with it.
“We know it’s a topic that’s not only local, but it’s statewide as well as across the country that’s an ongoing problem that’s been magnified in recent years,” he said. “We do lose staff at times because young mothers can’t find child care.”
The district has discussed leasing any open space in its buildings to child care providers to offer before or after school care, or setting up a day care program for Spring Hill schools staff, but nothing has been set in stone, Luttrell said.
“It’s crucial, it’s not just crucial for the parents themselves but every work place,” he said.