PENDLETON — Struggling to keep itself fully staffed, the Pendleton School District’s school bus contractor is pitching the district on a new recruiting strategy — pay its school bus drivers more.

Representatives from Mid Columbia Bus Co., which provides school bus services to school districts across Umatilla and Morrow counties, have spoken at the Pendleton School Board’s April and May meetings to share the details behind its latest driver shortage and what the Pendleton company is doing to solve it.

In an interview, Pendleton Superintendent Chris Fritsch said the driver shortage has led to service interruptions throughout the school year.

While driver shortages have been an on-and-off problem for the company for years, Midco manager Thyra Lepak told the school board at its May 10 meeting that the business’ latest shortage has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and federally boosted unemployment insurance, which Lepak said is leading many potential driver candidates to stay home rather than drive a bus.

Lepak said Midco’s Pendleton routes are short 10 drivers, and the current pipeline isn’t churning out enough drivers to meet demand.

According to Lepak, of the 17 recent applicants to work Pendleton routes, only three ended up as drivers or in the company’s training program.

Midco pays drivers $15 an hour in Pendleton, higher than the state’s rural county minimum wage, which will rise from $11 to $11.50 in July. But in a tight labor market, Midco is finding success in raising its wages further.

Lepak said its Hermiston routes saw a significant increase in applicants after Midco raised driver wages in the district to $16.50 an hour. Plans are now underway to raise Hermiston wages again, this time to $17 per hour.

Chuck Moore, Midco’s region vice president of Eastern Oregon and Idaho, said the goal isn’t just recruitment, but also retention.

Lepak said Midco recently lost an experienced driver to another job with better pay, and there are some challenges beyond pay to recruiting candidates. Drivers only work about six-and-a-half hours per day and don’t work during school holidays and vacations.

And if Midco wants to raise the wages of its drivers in Pendleton, it will need to work with the district to change the terms of its contract.

Fritsch told the board that both sides are meeting, but the district wants assurances that whatever contract they agree to, it results in fully staffed, functional bus routes. Currently, the district pays more than $2 million from its general fund for student transportation services.

“We would like to see some hard numbers,” he said.

After the meeting, Fritsch said that if the district did agree to a revised contract with Midco, it would present the resulting document to the board for approval.

In the meantime, Lepak said Midco will attempt to fill its vacant slots by doing multiple recruiting events over the summer.

Headquartered in Pendleton while servicing districts in Oregon and Idaho, Midco has been providing school bus services since 1956. In 2015, Midco was purchased by Landmark Student Transportation Inc., a Canadian company that also owns bus companies in Missouri and Wisconsin.