On Wednesday, the Lexington Herald-Leader reported that Lextran had to scale back Lexington bus service on several routes due to a shortage of drivers:

Jill Barnett, general manager of Lextran, said all public transit agencies, including transit agencies in Louisville and Northern Kentucky, are struggling to find enough drivers.

Further down, the article noted that all drivers and passengers must wear a face mask on the buses and inside waiting areas at the Downtown Transit Center.

And now we have this early morning story:

Fayette school bus driver shortage cancels routes. Families asked to have a back up.

By Valarie Honeycutt Spears | August 12, 2021 | 06:44 AM EDT

After several bus drivers called in sick Thursday morning with the district already shorthanded, Fayette Superintendent Demetrus Liggins said he “took the extraordinary step” of canceling four bus routes.

In a late-night message to families on the first day of school Wednesday, Liggins said the routes canceled were Bus 313 with service to Brenda Cowan Elementary School and service to Frederick Douglass High School, Bus 17 with service to Henry Clay High School and Bus 217 with service to Dixie Elementary School.

“This is certainly not an ideal situation and we deeply apologize that we have had to inconvenience our families,” said Liggins, who is starting his first year.

There’s more at the original, but Mrs Spears noted that a shortage of bus drivers has been an “ongoing challenge” for the Fayette County public schools.

Neither story says, of course, that the mask mandate ordered by Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) might be having an impact, but it’s an obvious question: would you want to be a bus driver and face possibly being accosted by angry students and their parents over such. Given the very liberal unemployment eligibility and the government paying people not to work, why sign up to take such abuse?

Mrs Spears, of course, could not include such a point in her article, given that the Herald-Leader’s Editorial Board supported Mr Beshear on his mask mandate. Then again, as we have pointed out previously, the newspaper’s Editorial Board aren’t exactly in tune with the voters in the Commonwealth.

In their editorial, the Board wrote, “Gov. Andy Beshear may have just signed away his chance to win re-election . . . .” From their keyboard to God’s monitor screen!