Bus drivers are in such short supply that EastSide Charter School in Wilmington, Del., is offering parents $700 to drop off and pick up their children for the school year. Pittsburgh Public Schools, which needs more than 400 drivers, is delaying the return to classrooms by two weeks.

And in Montgomery County, Maryland’s largest district, Montgomery County Public Schools is being walloped on both ends: by delayed deliveries of new buses due to a lack of computer chips for the buses’ air-conditioning systems and a shortage of people to drive them.


For months, the economy has been rattled by labor shortages and supply chain shocks slowing the delivery of goods around the world. As schools reopen under the shadow of a worsening coronavirus pandemic, they are being squeezed by both — facing shortages of bus drivers, substitute teachers, computers, even ketchup packets and dry-erase markers.

Read more...