LAFAYETTE, La. — The Lafayette Parish School Board has approved additional salary increases for school support personnel and bus drivers, as part of a continued effort to improve compensation and retain essential staff across the district.
“Recruiting bus drivers is difficult, not just in Lafayette, but across the state,” said Tracy Wirtz, communications director for the Lafayette Parish School System (LPSS).
As part of the new budget, the starting salary for a new LPSS bus driver will rise to $25,000 — more than $4,000 above the district’s current entry-level pay. Each step on the bus driver pay scale will also increase by about $4,000, ensuring longer-serving drivers receive a raise as well.
“What that does is it raises it incrementally up the pay scale, so drivers who've been driving longer will also get a raise,” Wirtz explained.
The School Board’s approved budget also includes a $1,500 annual salary increase for several school-based support positions. Wirtz credited careful fiscal management for making these raises possible. “Fiscal responsibility — in two words — the board has been very intentional about looking at where money is spent, how it's spent, where they can make those adjustments so that they can invest it back into their personnel,” she said.
To further accelerate recruitment, LPSS’s transportation department will offer a free commercial driver’s license (CDL) training course in June for those interested in becoming school bus drivers. “It's three days — you come in, they give you all of the basics before you go and take your CDL, and that is truly beneficial to someone who has been wanting to maybe become a bus driver,” Wirtz said.
The moves reflect a multi-year district effort to improve employee compensation, particularly raising bus driver base pay to be competitive with others in the region. “I think that this is going to be a great first step in making sure that we recruit bus drivers into the district, but also that we retain the ones we already have,” Wirtz said.
Bus drivers and eligible support staff will see the pay increases take effect on July 1.
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