School District needs bus drivers, teachers

Hungry Horse News

Like many other businesses across the valley, Columbia Falls School District 6 is finding it’s not immune to the labor shortage.

The school has a host of open positions, Superintendent Cory Dziowgo said last week.

The district has about 140 “classified” employees, which include bus drivers, custodians, secretaries and paraeducators. It also employs about 130 teachers.

The school has about six teacher openings, two rather unique opportunities because they’re part-time; and several classified employee openings.

A starting teacher, with a bachelor’s degree, makes about $41,380 a year.

The biggest need is bus drivers. They need four this year and could need even more next year, as three are set to retire.

The school helps with the cost and training for someone to get a commercial driver’s license, Dziowgo noted, providing nearly everything, save for the license itself.

He said filling bus driver positions was a No. 1 concern.

“We’ve got to get kids to school and help families,” he said.

If the school doesn’t have enough drivers, it could have to extend the zone where families have to provide their own transportation to school. Currently, families that live within three miles of school have to provide transportation to and from school.

But bus drivers can be tough to fill — it’s a split shift and buses are often full, making for a high stress job.

The school can make a bus driver position into a full-time gig, however, if the employee wants to work in food service or another classified job. It’s also boosted the pay. Kitchen workers start at just under $19 an hour; bus drivers $21.84, mechanics $28 and groundspeople $24.26.

The school expects to be able to provide free lunch to all students this year, regardless of income, through a federal program. That means it will need more food workers to feed the kids. It’s expecting to serve about 220,000 lunches this upcoming year, Dziowgo noted.