New data shows Wake County's yellow school bus routes will be fully staffed again this year.
This comes just two years after a driver shortage left hundreds of school system students without an on-time ride to school.
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The Wake County Public School System will have 605 drivers, 41 more than the number of routes.
It's also 32 more drivers than they had at this time last year.
Data on monthly bus driver hiring shows the number of drivers has been increasing almost every month since hitting a four-year low in March 2024 of 564 drivers.
Wake has raised bus driver pay above most other counties to at least $20 per hour. The district also now has a full-time recruiter for bus drivers.
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The district is still working with vendors to offer more routes for the roughly 36,000 students with disabilities, pre-kindergarteners and housing insecure students who ride different buses. A total of six vendors can cover 240 routes right now. About 1,200 families eligible for the vendor-provided buses will instead use district-provided stipends to cover their travel to school, at a cost of $2.7 million to the district throughout the school year.
The district is also still struggling with hiring mechanics to work on school buses. The district is short 23 mechanics -- or a quarter of its 92 mechanic positions. That's better by only a few mechanics than last year at this time.