Effective Nov. 1, Frisco ISD bus drivers will see a pay increase to their base wage by $1. During Monday’s regular meeting, FISD board of trustees unanimously approved to increase the pay for bus drivers from $15.63 to $16.63 per hour. The total cost to the district is $224,000. Doug Zambiasi, deputy superintendent of support services, said FISD has has been experiencing a severe bus driver shortage for more than a year now. The district is currently 28 drivers short, and office staff and mechanics have been filling the void for months. FISD has a total of 159 bus drivers, 45 percent which live in Frisco and 55 percent live outside of Frisco. Zambiasi said his greatest fear is that the current drivers will begin to need personal days for illness or family business and the district will not be able to meet the transportation needs of students. “I’m an optimist and I think there’s a light at the end of tunnel and we’re going to turn this thing around, but after a year and a half I’m convinced that we need to do something really serious to try to get the drivers to come to Frisco,” Zambiasi said. Zambiasi said that FISD is not just competing for bus drivers with other school districts but their competing for people. “For the people that work in Frisco, we need to make it attractive to them to look at another career option in being a bus driver rather than working in some other capacity in some other business,” Zambiasi said. Zambiasi said the district has had several recruiting efforts throughout the year using social media, job fairs, newsletters, etc. Zambiasi also said that the district’s efforts should not only be to recruit new employees but to retain current ones. Between Aug. 11 and Oct. 1, the district paid a total of $84,557 in overtime for bus drivers, Zambiasi said. “If we recruit new employees but lose the veterans we have right now that do a good job then we aren’t really making any headway,” Zambiasi said. Zambiasi also said that the Department of Public Safety’s process for licensing a new driver can take up to eight weeks. Zambiasi said the district is looking to improve the situation by becoming a third-party testing site so they could test potential drivers at a district level. He believes this will help recruit new drivers and help speed up the process of getting their Commercial Driver’s License and working as an FISD bus driver. “This pay increase will make a huge impact on our ability to retain and recruit new drivers,” Zambiasi said.