Would You Manage 70 Children and a 15-Ton Vehicle for $18 an Hour?

What if every person who wants to "manage 70 children" has already swum upstream to somewhere with way more velocity of money? Driving a school bus to make some extra money is all well and good, unless all the would-be drivers are already working full time because they have expensive degrees, student loans, and a high opportunity cost to driving part time while staying home because their alternative of a full time salary is very lucrative.

Which is to say, maybe all the women who have typically had this skillset and inclination have been pushed into universities, and now "pay more" is $35/hr, not $19/hr.

Add to this that suburban schools of the types often built in recent decades take way more bussing infrastructure, and the driving would be way more stressful in those environments. If you're reading a story about someone idling their car in line for an hour, that's definitely the setting (where I grew up, it only took 10 minutes to bike home from school at child pace, so you'd just do that). So maybe you could put $20/hr and get enough people, but it's also a 40% increase in hours that have to be paid and similar increase in equipment costs.