The term “emergency” generally suggests that something unanticipated has happened and requires an accelerated response. Gov. Josh Green issued an emergency proclamation Friday because the start of a new school year three days later brought the closure of many school bus routes, a situation that needs to be addressed immediately.

However, it was a situation that was predictable and should have been avoided, given that the same issue — a workforce shortage that left too many buses driverless — has festered for a year. This is a problem for families contending with Oahu traffic and especially on Hawaii island, where commuting distances are long and where there are fewer alternatives.

Last Thursday, the state Department of Education announced that the shortage compelled the suspension of 108 routes in Central Oahu and East Hawaii island. This impacted nearly 2,900 students who had registered to use bus transportation.

The governor’s proclamation was made in order to allow companies that operate vans or smaller buses to fill in the gap, even without meeting the strict requirements of a special commercial driver’s license.

The worst of it was that school principals who must head off problems for their campus families did not get a heads-up until the last moment — learning about it when the public did on Thursday, just days before Monday’s start of the school year.

The proclamation was similar to one Green had issued at the beginning of the previous school year, when the DOE also cut bus routes. The question is, why was this not resolved sooner or, at the very least, why were so many stakeholders left in the dark?

Let’s look for answers to be secured soon: State Rep. Justin Woodson, the Maui legislator who chairs the House Committee on Education, said he hopes to convene an informational briefing in the next week to straighten out how this happened and what can be done to improve the situation. The buck stops at the desk of state Schools Superintendent Keith Hayashi to explain why the solution has eluded DOE officials for so long, and why communication was so lacking recently.

Ground Transport Inc. holds the contract for management of the student bus service on Oahu, Hawaii island and Maui. Its spokesperson said the company has given regular status reports to the DOE, which has countered that school officials notified the affected schools as soon as they knew the situation.

It’s up to lawmakers to get to the bottom of this, and for the state Board of Education to follow up.

To be sure, the shortage of school bus drivers is not unique to Hawaii; since the COVID-19 crisis, the workforce problem has been the rule, not the exception nationally.

The National Education Association cites research by the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank, showing that the number of school bus drivers has not returned to pre-pandemic levels. Across the country, there were 192,400 bus drivers working in K-12 schools in September 2023, down 15.1% from September 2019.

Ground Transport maintains that the $32 hourly rate is pretty attractive, and that incentives are being enhanced for commercial driver’s licenses, which is what normally is required to drive a school bus.

The challenge for officials is to find out, perhaps by asking those who have considered it, what would make the job more appealing over alternatives in today’s competitive labor market. Hayashi and team should have raised the public profile of the issue much earlier; that might have helped to draw more prospective drivers.

DOE, working through the emergency proclamation, is accelerating the timeline for substituting other bus options, but it is expected to take weeks. That could seem an eternity to families who should not have to endure such chaos just to get their kids to class.