CHARDON, Ohio — Doug Snyder, the athletic director at Chardon High School, said he’s had to work with other school districts to adjust to a shortage of bus drivers for athletic competitions.
“We adjusted some start times for our away games. We adjusted start times for home games to accommodate teams coming in with similar problems. It was just a matter of everyone involved being as flexible as possible,” Snyder said.
But on rare occasions, he said he’s had to ask parents to carpool some athletes. Snyder said that is not ideal, but it was necessary due to the shortage.
“We would not ever have kids driving kids to contests,” Snyder said.
This season, Snyder said the district has eight new drivers and some smaller teams will ride in vans. He said some coaches now have gotten the proper licenses to drive these smaller vehicles.
“We will have some coaches that can drive vans this year. That will take some of the pressure off the transportation department,” Snyder said.
Snyder said they’re still trying to replace several drivers who’ve retired since last year. He said getting someone trained to drive a school bus can take time since they need a special kind of license.
