Pros
No nights, weekends, holidays or summers. This is nice for spending time with family. Kelly Dean, the owner, genuinely cares about the students and staff.
Cons
No pay stability. Whatever you bid on at the start of the school year is guaranteed to go down by at least 3-5 hours/week, which makes a difference when most runs are only around 25 hours/week. If school is cancelled for any reason (weather, power outage, mental health day, Covid), you receive nothing. Paychecks can vary from 20 (or less) hours to 36 hours a week, making it incredibly difficult to budget. The company guarantees 4 hours/day worked, but this is not really sufficient. A typical schedule may look like: 6:10-8:30, 10:30-12:00, 2:30-4:10. That is 5.5 hours for the day, but 10 hours of your day have been tied up because of the midday run. No advancement opportunities for those actually on the road. Office positions tend to go to substitutes (who spend most of the day in the office). This makes the drivers/aides on regular runs feel stuck in their positions. Very little support from office staff, school staff, or parents. While we primarily work with special needs students, the number of physical injuries sustained from students hitting/biting/kicking staff is unacceptable. Legitimate concerns are often dismissed until -after- there is an incident. A more proactive approach would benefit everyone, including the students. Benefits are unaffordable. I was grossing $10,750 some years and paying $3,500 in premiums alone, plus deductibles and copays.