While officials have often said that low pay and the COVID-19 pandemic have caused a severe shortage of bus drivers for Hawaii public schools, a top official at the state Department of Education says the “No. 1 reason” drivers are leaving their jobs in droves actually is student misbehavior.

“We have had students fight on the bus. We have had students throwing firecrackers in the bus. We have students jumping out of the back of the bus,” said Assistant Superintendent Randy Tanaka, who is second in command at the DOE’s Office of Facilities and Operations.

“And the drivers are so concerned about safety, which is their No. 1 responsibility to get our students from point A to point B, (they) are just disappointed and said, ‘I don’t want any of my students to get hurt, and it’s best that I not drive.’”

Still, unruly youths are only part of a complicated tangle of problems that have left Hawaii public schools more than 200 drivers short of the 650 needed to fully staff all routes statewide.

During a virtual meeting organized Thursday by state Rep. Trish La Chica (D, Waipio-­Mililani), Tanaka and other officials provided a detailed discussion of the multitude of causes, ripple effects and frustrations of the bus driver shortage, and reasons that solutions have been tough to devise. La Chica said nearly 50 community members were in attendance.

The driver shortage led the DOE last month to announce partial or complete suspension of bus routes for 10 Oahu high schools and four Kauai schools. The estimated 1,400 displaced students are being encouraged to instead take county buses using free passes under a state-county program called EXPRESS.

The bus driver shortage continues nationwide because during the pandemic, as numerous schools were shuttered in favor of virtual learning, many drivers took other jobs, Tanaka said.

The part-time status of most school bus driving positions, and the difficulty of getting an additional certification on a commercial driver’s license required for Hawaii school buses, also are among the reasons the DOE was short by about 150 drivers statewide the past school year, he said.

The DOE consolidated and adjusted some routes the past school year. Hawaii public high school students in September 2022 also were offered free city and county bus passes to use on Oahu, Kauai and Maui through the EXPRESS program, which drew 9,000 participants last year.

But with additional waves of school bus driver resignations, the DOE by late July reported that the bus contractors were now short by approximately 226 drivers.

As the DOE had to choose which routes to close, federal law required the DOE to continue to put top priority on continuing to transport special education students, followed by Title 1 students, whose families have lower income, Tanaka said. The DOE also prioritized providing buses for elementary and middle school students over high school students, who are presumed to be more able to safely use public transportation. “We try not to touch the (grades) K-8 routes,” he said.

The DOE has offered mileage compensation to families who have lost bus service. It also has held job fairs to help the bus contractors attract more drivers, and is working to get an exemption authorized by the state so that commercial driver’s license holders would not be required to have a special certification to drive a school bus, he said.

The DOE for the next two weeks will be closely monitoring how students statewide are getting to school, he said. “We may have a spot where the (school bus) ridership isn’t as high as we anticipated … then we may shift the bus to a more high demand route,” he said. The DOE is also in “active discussion” with public transportation officials about whether adjustments to bus routes or bus stops are needed, he said.

“What the community is saying does not fall on deaf ears. But it’s a challenge,” Tanaka said.

La Chica’s district includes Koa Ridge, which is home to some students who attend Pearl City High School, one of the schools with suspended bus service. La Chica recently tested the city bus ride herself and found it took more than 1-1/2 hours to travel the 8 miles from Koa Ridge to Pearl City High.

La Chica asked Tanaka during the meeting why the DOE didn’t announce the route suspensions until two weeks before the start of school, leaving many families scrambling. A parent also in the virtual meeting asked why it feels like Leeward Oahu schools are bearing the brunt of school bus suspensions.

Tanaka said that staff who plan bus routes provide updates on two-week cycles. He added that many schools across the state are having to adapt.

“I’ve got routes coming from Makaha, students from Makaha going to a school in Palolo, a charter school called Anuenue, and they get up 5 o’clock in the morning and there’s a 2-1/2-hour ride,” he said. A Hawaii island route running from Waikoloa to Kona is an hour and a half, he said.

“It’s not acceptable to me, but unfortunately (those are) the circumstances,” he said. “We’ve talked about pulling routes from other shorter locations, but our principals and our organization don’t want to ‘rob Peter to pay Paul.’”

Richard Fajardo, complex area superintendent for Pearl City-Waipahu, added, “We (at the DOE) acknowledge the public stating their frustrations and the timeliness of it. So as a leadership team, it is something that we will be reflective of and mindful of” moving forward.

Meanwhile, efforts to get the City and County of Hono­lulu to restore city bus stops closer to Pearl City High School are at an impasse because of noise, trash and vandalism generated by youths in the past, Tanaka said.

The community previously “has pushed back big time and said, ‘You’re not moving the bus stop next to my house.’ We’re also trying to work with the city to adjust their routes, but that’s much more difficult because they’re serving the broader community, not just students.”