"Safety also responded and found 18 safety violations between the two school buses taking the children on the field trip. A third bus that responded to replace the damaged bus was also found to have safety violations. The unit determined none of the bus drivers were properly licensed to be driving the school buses."

This guy is just a symptom of a huge problem all over the country. Being a school bus driver doesn't pay well and the schedule - get up really early, work for a few hours, work again for a few hours in the afternoon five days a week - has to make it really difficult to have another job to make up the income shortfall.

It's not easy to find people who can pass the drug screen and backgeound check and who are willing to put up with the pay, the schedule, the stress and dealing with dozens of wild kids every day. Also, if DCPS is like many/most other school systems, the bus drivers are not school system employees. They're probably employed by some contractor or staffing service that pays badly and provides bare minimum benefits, which the drivers likely don't qualify for anyway since the weekly hours don't add up to full time.

Schools systems of every size all over the country have this problem. My brother was a substitute teacher last year in another state and school administrators tried more than once to persuade him to drive a school bus because they had such a shortage. He does not have any credentials to drive a school bus.