WASHOUGAL — David Tsao couldn’t pass up an opportunity to do some recruiting while offering an update on the Washougal School District’s transportation department during a school board meeting earlier this month.
“Any of you that are interested, just go for it,” Tsao, the district’s transportation director, told interim Superintendent Aaron Hansen and the board during an Oct. 8 meeting. “The very first thing we teach you is how to back up a bus. Once you get that much figured out, there’s nothing else that’s going to be that tough.”
The district’s transportation department has had a smooth start to the school year, despite staff and weather-related challenges, Tsao said.
“It is, every single day, a puzzle to … try to make sure that we cover everything, everybody’s needs,” he said. “So far, we have not had to say no to anybody yet. We’ve been able to cover all the athletics, we’ve been able to cover all the field trips, and we haven’t left any students at home or at school not being able to transport.
“This has been easily the easiest, smoothest start that we’ve had to a school year.”
Tsao said that the biggest challenge he’s faced since being hired in 2021 has been a lack of drivers.
“When I first arrived here, we were short of fulfilling all of our regular routes,” he said. “We didn’t even have substitutes to cover those, so mechanics drove, dispatchers drove, I drove.”
Tsao said every one of his department’s 38 employees has a Class B commercial driver’s license. Of his 32 full-time drivers, 25 have regular morning and afternoon routes and half are new to the district.
The district currently has seven substitute bus drivers.
“There’s a couple or three that are just emergency-type, part-time substitutes, but we still need them,” Tsao said, adding the district is always looking for additional substitute drivers because it tends to lose substitutes to full-time jobs in other districts once they’re trained.
One of the challenges to finding new substitutes is that the district doesn’t have a large pool to recruit from, Tsao said. Some drivers are retired but still want to work occasionally. Some are parents with children in schools who want work schedules to match their kids’ school schedule. “Those are the two major areas that we are able to recruit from.”
A “Drivers Wanted” sign hangs from a bus parked in front of the district’s bus garage on E Street.
“We have gone to a couple of job fairs, but they’re not really productive, to be honest,” Tsao said. “The sign-age is important for people to know that we’re looking for drivers, and word of mouth is probably as (important) as anything else.”
Different weather
The district has modified some of its bus routes to increase efficiency and improve its transportation efforts in snowy and icy weather.
Tsao said the district transports a higher percentage of students to schools by bus than most districts in Washington.
The school district’s geography impacts the transportation efforts as well, according to Tsao.
“We have one school that’s quite far out, and upriver, there’s a lot of distance all the way into Skamania County,” Tsao said. “Given that, the amount of time a student is on a bus becomes a factor.”
Tsao said he worked with former Superintendent Mary Templeton to adjust the district’s snow routes for the 2023-24 school year in an effort to cut down on the amount of snow days the district has to take.
The district put four inclement-weather make-up days on its 2024-25 calendar, fewer than in previous years.
“One of the changes we made was that we’re no longer going to drive the upper elevations of Skye Road for snow rounds,” he said. “Those 200, 250 students impacted shouldn’t be impacting the other 2,500 or 3,000 students.”
The district also decided to have its buses travel mostly below 500 feet in elevation.
“We’re able to have schools open maybe a little bit more than previous years,” Tsao said. “Hopefully what happens with this change is that we’re able to maybe have a couple more late-start days, which still counts as a school day, versus having a snow day because we can’t take a bus to get to go up to Skye Road.”
Washougal parents have lodged complaints in the past several years about the number of snow days, noting the sometimes-drastic difference in weather between the areas of the “upriver” schools and the lower-elevation schools.
“I didn’t realize that I had to be a meteorologist as well when they told me about this job. I mean, we have two distinct weather patterns,” Tsao said. “What happens down here at 400 or 500 feet, near sea level, and what happens at 1,500 feet is dramatically different as we get into November, December, into the winter.
“If you’re a parent down here and you’re seeing rain … you say, ‘What the heck is going on? Why don’t we have school today?’”
School board member Jane Long, who represents the “upriver” community’s District 2, lauded Tsao’s efforts.
“I know the routes out of Cape (Horn-Skye Elementary School and Canyon Creek Middle School) are tough,” Long said. “I’ve heard from a few parents that their route times have gone down this year. I don’t know what magic you’re working to make that happen for them, but it’s appreciated.”
“I’ve appreciated David’s work, his experience, his dedication to this district and to transportation,” Hansen said. “He understands the regulations. He does a really good job training. He’s done a great job.”
