Tampa, Florida -- The Hillsborough School District is facing a critical shortage of school bus drivers and making a major push to hire 200 drivers. However, 10 Investigates Mike Deeson, who last year reported on questionable drivers behind the wheel, says you may be shocked at the experience level the new drivers will have when transporting your kids.
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The advertisement for the job fair the Hillsborough School District held Monday might as well be: Want to drive kids on a school bus, no experience necessary.
People applying for the job don't even have to have a commercial driver's license, which is required by the state, in order to get hired by the district.
The district interviewed about a 100 potential drivers Monday and it will train them to become bus drivers and help them get that commercial driver's license. But our investigation last year found districts so desperate for drivers many had drivers behind the wheel with multiple crashes and at least one careless driving citation.
For example, in Hillsborough, before she got fired, Stephanie Wilkerson has four crashes in a two-year period for hitting a school bus twice and hitting two cars.
Before Hillsborough fired Michelle Liebersteing she had six incidents in six years.
But new Transportation GM Jim Beekman says parents shouldn't be concerned about the new drivers being hired because they will get training and will be required to pass a Commercial Driver's License Test.
"And so the DMV actually performs the test -- not us. When they come back to us they go through the state curriculum which teach them how to be a bus driver, so a lot of that is classroom instruction and then a lot of on-the-road instruction," says Hillsborough School District General Manager Jim Beekman.
Hillsborough isn't the only district hurting for drivers in our investigation, we found Pinellas has 32 percent less drivers than three years ago, Sarasota 27 percent, and that leads critics to say the standards have been lowered for hiring and the bar is too high for firing bad drivers.
