Well, if we had much better school bus drivers than we have now, what benefits would we realize from the change?

We'd have more since it was a higher paying job. Man districts lack enough drivers resulting in longer routes, which takes time away from the kids to have a life outside school.

Also we'd have happier kids and drivers which is great. The driver is part of the social worker aspect of a school, breaking up post school fights or noticing if a kid gets out to walk into a dangerously degraded housing situation. Would be nice to have very well paid, well trained people doing that job.

Why?

My mom drove school bus. It allowed her to work a part time job and stay at home with us kids when we were young. The drivers seemed split between people like her and older people that probably already had the right license, and it was a nice part time job for them too.

I don’t disagree we should have better teachers by paying them more to widen the potential pool but that would need to go hand in hand with actually being able to fire poor performers.

It varies by region, but a lot of areas have a difficult shortage which results in really long routes or troubles when a bus breaks down/several drivers are out. Different states/areas also have different laws on when that means bus service just isn't available. There is, of course, a floor for the requirements of a driver, which drives these to get worse when salary (and therefore job interest) is lower.

Half a lifetime ago now, my bus route in high school took 1.5-2 hours to get me ~4 miles from the school after some route consolidations (I got stuck on the end of the combined route where they were about to return to the bus depot - depending on the year that meant either getting up really early or getting home really late). If the weather was good I could just bike it, but that certainly wasn't always the case in Michigan.