HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY, Fla. — The Hillsborough County School District is hosting a job fair on Saturday for school bus drivers.
- April 29
- 8 a.m.-12 p.m.
- 9455 Harney Road, Thonotosassa
- Driver positions have a starting pay of $16.04 an hour
“We’re looking for drivers, looking for people who love to be around kids and want to make an impact in our community,” said Jim Beekman, General Manager of Transportation for the Hillsborough County Schools.
The district is looking to hire more than 100 drivers immediately to fill open bus routes.
“If 200 people walked through the door on Saturday, we could hire all 200,” said Beekman.
Hillsborough County is dealing with an ongoing school bus diver shortage that’s a problem for districts nationwide, including across the state of Florida.
“I’m on a monthly call with districts across the country, in a national group, and this is always either number one or number two on the topic list about the shortage of drivers and people trying to think outside the box, do things differently try to get folks in there and interested in driving school buses,” said Beekman.
School leaders will be conducting interviews Saturday for bus drivers and mechanics.
“We’ll have interviews on-site. We’ll have a lot of the processing on-site. We’ll actually have some computers if they haven’t gone and filled out an application; we’ll have those on site as well and have individuals that can help them do that,” said Beekman.
“If they have a commercial driver’s license already, of course, that speeds the process up because that is a requirement to drive a school bus but if they do not have a CDL, we are a third party tester, so we can actually test them and get them their CDL,” he added.
