RUTHERFORD COUNTY, Tenn. (WKRN) — On Tuesday night, Tennessee State Representative Mike Sparks (R-Smyrna) will go to the Rutherford County Commission with a proposed solution to Tennessee's bus driver shortage: lowering the age requirement from 25 to 21 years old.

Sparks introduced a bill to lower the age requirement last legislative session, but that bill failed in the Senate by one vote. Now, he's trying to rally support for the idea before introducing a new bill.

"If a county commission or school board takes a position, we pay attention," Sparks said. "Our delegation pays attention."

In a letter to the county commission, Sparks points to data from 2020 to 2024 showing what he calls "an aging driver workforce coupled with an increase in crash incidents."

"I've got young people that want to drive a school bus — like Isaiah Heineck, who drives for MTSU at 21, but he can't drive for the county because he has to wait till 25," Sparks said. "He's driving students. As we speak, he's driving students at MTSU and he's 21 years of age."

Sparks tells News 2 a key reason why he thinks his bill to lower the age limit failed this year is because of a 2016 school bus crash in Chattanooga that killed six students. The driver, Johnthony Walker, was under 25 at the time.

“That was such a critical moment of losing six children, but here's the thing to keep in mind; one, the guy's a child molester. Okay?" Sparks told News 2. "He shouldn't have been driving a school bus. Parents complained. Fellow students complained about his driving. Someone should have intervened to stop that crisis before it unfolded, but sadly, that's now affected a crisis across our state, with the shortage."

Sparks argued lowering the age requirement could not only get more prospective drivers in the door, but create a new career path for young people.

"We are the most restrictive in the nation, if not the world — more and more restrictive than California, New York, Russia, Cuba — Tennessee is and we talk about being the land of the free and liberty and workforce development,” Sparks told News 2.

Any vote from Rutherford County Commissioners would show their opinion on the issue, and that alone would not change the law. Sparks said he will bring a new bill to the General Assembly to lower the age limit in January.

News Source : https://www.wkrn.com/news/tn-rep-rally-support-lowering-school-bus-driver-age-limit/