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School bus companies in the Treasure Valley looking to hire bus drivers

Posted at 3:45 PM, Aug 23, 2018
and last updated 2018-08-23 17:45:52-04

First Student bus company in Boise has 116 routes, but only 118 drivers leaving not a lot of wiggle room, so First Student brought in seven drivers from Oregon to get through the first few weeks of school.

Cascade Student Transportation is looking to hire 12-20 drivers at a starting wage of $14.25 an hour, a dollar and twenty-five cent raise of last year, First Student needs to hire 25 bus drivers and currently has 13 drivers in training.

“We put the applicants through 50 hours of rigorous training and that also includes a background check, pre-employment drug screen and DOT physical," said Larry Fielding at Student First. " You can actually get your private pilots license with 40 hours of classroom training, where a bus driver takes 50.”

Because getting children to school and back home safely are the number one priority of both companies and the most rewarding part of the job for experienced bus drivers.

"Since the school year just started it's so nice to see the kids that I had on the bus last year," said Terry Marinos who has been driving with Cascade for three years. "And of course the new ones, it is nice to see all these smiling faces."

A representative of Cascade Student Transportation told us that Kuna reached out to see if Cascade could help with a few routes so Cascade hopes to hire new applicants to be able to help out in these type of situations in the future.

To see what it is like to be a bus driver including some of the training check out the video.