Some parents of schoolchildren were left scrambling to get their kids to school Tuesday morning as several bus routes across town were cancelled a day before the first day of the 2026 school year, as the busing service provider struggles with issues being faced across the country.
“Despite our best efforts, there is currently a lack of drivers available in the area,” Della Spencer, location manager for First Student Inc., a U.S.‑based company that provides contracted school-bus transportation services across North America, operating tens of thousands of yellow buses for public and private school districts, told The Times.
On Monday, posts on social media and the website of the Rainy River District Transportation Services Consortium (RRDTSC) announced several cancellations for the first week of school.
The RRDTSC said in the notice that families would be contacted directly by contract bus company First Student; however, several families reported receiving no such communication.
“One week before the start of school, we had three people resign during our startup meeting,” Spencer said. “We’ve been training, we’ve been covering, we’ve been bringing in extra drivers, and everything is being done in our power.”
Cancellations will continue until the operator is able to hire and train qualified drivers, Nikki Armstrong, manager of transportation for the RRDTSC told The Times.
“We cannot provide a firm end date because it depends entirely on recruitment outcomes, but updates to families will be communicated as soon as new information becomes available.”
“The consortium along with the operator worked intensively right up to the start of school to secure a driver and avoid any disruption. Communication was issued as soon as it became clear, despite all efforts, that no driver would be available for start-up,” Armstrong said.
“Our priority is always to avoid cancellations, and the operator notifies families directly once every possible operational option has been explored.”
First Student has been actively training and recruiting over the summer, but the process to get qualified drivers on the road is long and involved, Spencer said.
“I have trainers from Thunder Bay coming into Fort Francis to get people ready behind the wheel, but it’s a long process, so it takes several weeks to clear criminal searches and vulnerable sector searches and behind-the-wheel training. Our training is 40 hours, so it takes a while to get them out on the routes.”
The company said it believes it will be able to fully restore regular service in the coming weeks and has been looking into every possible means to cover all of the RRDSB routes.
“We do everything that we can. We bring in drivers from out of the area, and they stay in hotels and drive the bus routes. The reality is that we can only attract so many of those drivers right now.”
The cancellations announced this week are:
- Bus 302 was cancelled all day Tuesday and Wednesday, but was expected to be running as scheduled on Thursday.
- Bus 313 was cancelled for only the mornings of Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, affecting only Robert Moore and Fort Frances High School Intermediate students in Grades 7 and 8. Route 313 shuttle bus pickups for Grade 9 to 12 students are not affected by the cancellations.
- Bus 314 was cancelled for the full week.
It’s not the first time RRDTSC has had to cancel or alter routes during the first week of school; however, with several thousand children being moved around the district to more than a dozen schools, the first week can often be chaotic, and the school-bus system has faced serious challenges across Canada.
A nationwide shortage of drivers has been building for years, and the Rainy River District is feeling the same pressures seen across Canada. The job is hard to staff: wages remain low compared to other commercial driving work, hours are part‑time and split between morning and afternoon runs and it tends to attract older, often retired, workers.
When COVID hit, many veteran drivers retired or left the industry, shrinking the pool and leaving operators without enough people to cover daily routes, sick days or emergencies. Rising expectations have also made the job more demanding. Drivers now handle supervision, behaviour management and regular training renewals on top of navigating long rural routes.
Operators are struggling to compete for labour in a tight job market, especially in the Rainy River District. Sectors like construction, trucking, and manufacturing offer steadier full‑time hours and higher pay, pulling potential recruits away from school transportation. Costs have climbed sharply—buses, parts, insurance, and wages—while provincial funding formulas have not kept pace.
First Student, which began managing student transportation for the district in 2018, got off to a rocky start. That year, many parents across the community said their child wasn’t picked up, was picked up by the wrong bus, or was dropped off at the wrong school. They also claimed bus drivers got lost on their routes while picking up and dropping off students. Those issues were quickly corrected.
Justin Brown, whose child was dropped off at the wrong school in 2018 and then was extremely late coming home, said Tuesday he’s not surprised by the cancellations.
“My family isn’t directly affected by this particular cancellation, but we were heavily affected last school year,” Brown told The Times. “We live in the country, and our children’s bus was cancelled multiple times, sometimes leaving us scrambling to get them to and from school.”
“This isn’t the first time I’ve raised concerns about school busing. Back in 2018, when First Student first took over, we had major issues as well. My child was dropped off at the wrong school and was extremely late getting home,” Brown said.
“So unfortunately, from my perspective, these transportation issues have been going on for years.”
