OCALA, FL (352today.com) – The Marion County Public School Board approved a job description for non-CDL drivers by a unanimous 5-0 vote at its meeting on Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2026.

Nancy Thrower, MCPS School board member, District No. 4 had the agenda item pulled for further discussion because transportation and on-time pickup and delivery of students continues to be one of the school districts’ greatest challenges. It also affects the families of the students significantly when the school district buses are not on time.

“We’ve been doing a little bit better lately, and on-time pickup we have moved from approximately 91 percent to 95 percent for on-time delivery in the morning,” said Thrower. “But delivering kids home, we’ve actually decreased from about 70 percent of on time home to 67.6, and because so many of our families have to work, it just continues to be a tremendous challenge.”

This has been a hot topic within the community. The school district continues to receive calls, but parents largely use the app to voice their concerns regarding on-time delivery, said Thrower. This is something that goes hand-in-hand with better attendance.

“I thought that it was really important to highlight the creative things transportation is trying to do, and bringing forward to us, including this new non-CDL driver position,” said Thrower.

Marion County has the distinction of the being a large county land-wise; it’s approximately the size of the State of Rhode Island, and has a lot of dirt roads, and there are places where you wouldn’t even think people would live where the school district has to go to pick up children, said Thrower.

“I think that it’s another tool that we will be able to have drivers that won’t be driving buses obviously because they won’t have their CDLs, but they will be able to drive our vans and hopefully get kids and get them to school on time and get them to home on time,” said Thrower. “The last thing we need to do is sabotage our attendance success. When parents can’t trust our transportation system, with so many families working and just kind of being on a razor’s edge, when it comes to scheduling. I really look forward to the day when our on-time drop-off begins to mirror our on-time delivery to school.”

While a driver with a non-commercial license would currently report to the school district’s supervisor of transportation, the new job description does give the school districts the opportunity, should an individual secondary school choose to potentially hire an employee similar to what was being discussed, and they were able to get a van donated to their school, they could potentially hire someone who could also drive an activity bus, said Dr. Allison Campbell, MCPS board member, District No. 1.

“That would be up to the discretion of any school having the funds and resources to do so, but this job description will give us the ability and flexibility to do this as well,” said Campbell. “I liken it to another community, another county that their high schools have the ability to hire their own groundskeeper, so they can maintain all of their athletic fields at the high school at the high school level. I liken it to that. So, as we move into site-based budgeting and the principal has discretion to spend their resources accordingly, this might give this opportunity to our principals as well.”

The school district does have some vans, so this is already adding to that fleet, said Thrower.

“We’re doing all we can to find drivers that are qualified and committed, and are ready to do the job right, so we can continue to alleviate this issue,” said Thrower.