BATON ROUGE — East Baton Rouge and Ascension parish school boards are now introducing air conditioning to their buses.

Last year, school boards around the capital region faced backlash from parents and bus drivers due to a lack of air conditioning on school buses, eventually leading to bus drivers going on strike in East Baton Rouge Parish.

Getting air conditioning on buses has been a hot topic for communities in the capital region for years, more recently with last year's record-breaking heat. When drivers did go on a strike, it left many parents scrambling to pick their kids up from school sometimes without prior notice. 

Chief of Operations for Ascension Parish Schools Jeff Parent says a climate-controlled environment will switch the focus back to the students.

"The focus will be on now really just transporting kids in a comfortable environment. They don't have to worry about any heat-related stress issues or those kinds of things," Parent said. 

Ascension and EBR parishes each say at least 85% of school buses will have air conditioning by the start of the school year. In EBR, buses with students who have to change bus routes on their commutes will be given priority for air conditioning. With these new changes, the school system says they are already seeing an increase in the number of their drivers.

EBR Schools' Interim Transportation Director Rob Howle told WBRZ that this year has seen the largest number of bus drivers since pre-COVID. 

Drivers in EBR are also set to receive a $1,300 pay raise this year, with both parishes saying they want to accurately reflect the value bus drivers play in students' lives.

"They are the first contact our students have each morning, and they're usually the last school contact they have in the afternoon and we want our bus operators to be happy; happy operators, you get happy kids," Howle said.