As the first day of public school in the 2023-2024 academic year came along, more than 1,100 students at 10 Oahu public high schools and 250 students at four schools on Kauai who should have been provided rides to school on a Department of Education (DOE)-scheduled bus were left to get themselves to class by some other method.

The DOE, unable to find enough bus drivers to transport those students, arranged with Oahu’s TheBus and the KauaiBus service to provide all students at affected high schools with free public bus passes. But while that solution, announced two weeks before school started, is better than nothing, it falls short of acceptable service.

Recognizing this, Gov. Josh Green signed an emergency proclamation that temporarily allows vehicles other than school buses, and licensed commercial drivers without a federally issued school bus driver license endorsement, to transport students. That action gives the DOE more options to provide the affected students with transportation — but only for a limited time.

The DOE must now act with a proper sense of urgency to restore the affected routes.

There are many good reasons for providing dedicated school bus service, and any number of reasons that a parent might prefer school bus service to a public bus pass. Among them: assurance that students will be efficiently transported directly to and from their schools. In at least some cases, the time and distance some students must cover to make use of public transportation is far out of bounds.

State Rep. Trish La Chica revealed this problem on her own initiative when, responding to constituent concerns, she attempted to catch Honolulu’s TheBus to get from Koa Ridge in Central Oahu to Pearl City High School. She found that it took more than 1 1 /2 hours to go the 8 miles required. Nearly half of that time was spent making a mile-long walk to the nearest bus stop at the start, and another 1/2-mile walk to the school, her destination.

“This is unacceptable, and our kids deserve better options,” La Chica said, and she’s absolutely right.

Pearl City Neighborhood Board Chair Larry Veray, for one, grasped the urgency of the issue, calling it an “emergency priority situation.” He appealed to the city to bring bus routes closer to Pearl City High, to no avail.

The following week, on Aug. 17, the governor issued an emergency proclamation temporarily suspending certain legal provisions to allow use of transport vehicles such as motor coaches, minibuses and vans, which can be driven by those with a commercial passenger vehicle license.

The benefit is that commercial drivers ineligible to provide transportation for the DOE under normal standards can now be recruited, broadening the employment pool. It’s a smart idea that increases flexibility without sacrificing safety — and it should have been proposed before school started.

Students subject to a complex and time-consuming route such as La Chica exposed are at risk of missing school, and that shouldn’t be allowed to happen.

Hawaii has been severely short of drivers for years, as have many school districts across the United States. Low pay, difficult working conditions, including student misbehavior, and the COVID-19 pandemic are among the reasons. That this problem should reach the level of a statewide “emergency” suggests the DOE should have taken stronger and more proactive steps, earlier in the process, to ensure that solutions were in place before the start of the school year.

The ultimate solution is to reduce or end Hawaii’s severe shortage of public school bus drivers — more than 200 for the current school year — through aggressive recruitment and incentives. Of course, it will not be easy or quick. In the meantime, DOE needs to continue to develop and implement reliable alternatives to getting its students to school safe, sound and on time.