A state workgroup charged with examining Ohio’s school transportation system has produced the first comprehensive dataset quantifying the bus driver shortage and the use of a state law that allows districts to deny bus service to students. The Ohio Pupil Transportation Workgroup, which issued its findings and recommendations in July 2026, reported that in fiscal year 2025, 14.68 percent of vacant school bus driver positions were filled on average across the state. In 34 districts, 10 percent or fewer of vacant positions were staffed.
For the 2025–2026 school year, more than 22,000 students were designated by their home district as impractical to transport. The vast majority — over 21,000 — were enrolled in community schools or chartered nonpublic schools. Among students attending a district school, only 618, or 0.09 percent, received the impracticality designation.
The driver shortage by the numbers
Ohio had 18,563 active bus drivers as of April 1, 2026, according to a Department of Education and Workforce survey cited by the workgroup. That represents a loss of roughly 7,000 drivers compared with the pre-pandemic count of 25,706, as reported by Ideastream Public Media. A spring 2026 survey of 225 districts by the workgroup found operational consequences: more than two-thirds of districts reported route consolidations, route terminations, or delayed start and end times. Forty-nine percent of transportation directors reported spending up to 10 hours per week driving routes themselves, and 32.8 percent reported more than 10 hours per week.
The workgroup also found that state funding for school bus purchases was eliminated in 2009, and that districts have since spent nearly $1.7 billion on replacement buses from local funds. State aid for transportation overall, the workgroup concluded, falls far short of the statutory supplement, with only a percentage of the supplement reaching the local level.
How the 'impractical to transport' clause works
Under Ohio Revised Code Section 3327.02, a school board may declare a student impractical to transport after considering six factors: time and distance, the number of pupils, the cost of equipment and personnel, whether similar service is provided to other eligible pupils, whether adding service disrupts current schedules, and whether other reimbursable transportation is available. A board that declares a student impractical must offer payment in lieu of transportation, known as PILO.
PILO payments are set between 50 percent of the statewide average cost of pupil transportation for the previous year and that average cost. For FY2026, the minimum PILO was $607.15 and the maximum was $1,214.29. Districts are not required to report PILO payments relative to their actual district costs to DEW.
The workgroup found that 119 districts declared every community school or chartered nonpublic school student impractical to transport. By contrast, 161 districts transported all students who requested it.
Comparisons to other states and prior Ohio findings
A 2019 analysis prepared for the Ohio Fair School Funding Plan found that Ohio’s transportation mandates far exceed those of other states, because Ohio requires districts to transport community school and nonpublic school students, including on days when the transporting district is not in session. That report also documented that the state’s minimum share of transportation funding dropped from 60 percent in FY2015 to 25 percent in FY2019.
Nationally, more than 90 percent of school districts were still reporting bus driver shortages as of late 2025, according to Ideastream Public Media reporting that cited national data. That indicates the challenge is not unique to Ohio, though the state’s mandate to transport students to a wider set of schools amplifies the effect.
The Ohio Supreme Court addressed the impracticality clause in State ex rel. Yost v. Columbus City Schools Board of Education, a 2025–2026 case involving a dispute over Columbus declaring students impractical. The court described the statutory framework: districts must consider six factors, pass a resolution, offer PILO, and if parents reject PILO, DEW conducts mediation and potentially a binding administrative hearing.
What the research says about transportation and choice
The workgroup cited research from New York City showing that school bus eligibility increases the likelihood a student attends a given school by 12 percent to 30 percent, suggesting that transportation access shapes school choice decisions. The workgroup noted that no comparable Ohio-specific data exists, which limits the generalizability of the New York findings to Ohio’s context.
A spring 2026 DEW survey cited by the workgroup found that 34 percent of community and chartered nonpublic school leaders reported at least one student disenrolling from their school because they were denied transportation by the home district. Forty-nine percent reported at least one potential student who chose not to enroll after a district communication that transportation would not be provided.
Workgroup recommendations
The workgroup’s top recommendations called for guaranteeing transportation for all eligible Ohio students to their school of choice, including phasing out impracticality determinations; fully funding the transportation mandate by allocating the full statutory transportation supplement per student; and, in the short term, clarifying declarations of impracticality. Over time, the workgroup recommended that PILO become exceptionally rare or be phased out completely.