Laid off from First Student.

What First Student layoffs have meant for employees

If you're laid off when your district changes bus companies, the contract's end, the effective date on First Student's notice and your own last day of work may fall on different dates. In St. Louis, First Student's contract and its staff's final day of employment were both set for June 30, St. Louis Public Radio reported, but some employees' last day of work was to fall on the school year's final day rather than on that June 30 effective date, according to First Alert 4. If your district has voted on a new operator, First Student is the one that can say which of those dates applies to you and whether pay and benefits run to the effective date, and the incoming company is the one that knows when its hiring for the next school year begins.

Not every cut traces to a new operator. Monitors' jobs can hang on how many a district wants on its buses, as First Student's Ohio letter showed in 2025, and some districts have dropped outside operators altogether, as Clovis Unified did in 2011 and Central Unified in 2009, Fresnoland noted. First Student's June 2026 Seattle notice gave no reason for its cut.

If the incoming company offers you a job, the terms other districts spelled out make a useful checklist. Fresno Unified's board was told First Student drivers in good standing would keep their seniority and get a five-hour daily work guarantee with Zūm, which also agreed to recognize the union the drivers chose, though Zūm still encouraged existing drivers to apply. Lawrence's switch to Durham came with raises of $1.50 an hour and signing bonuses up to $2,000, the Lawrence Times reported, and the district's finance director said a preliminary study had found eight runs that could be cut, with Durham to study more in the fall. If the new operator needs fewer drivers, priority in hiring may not reach all of them. Seniority, a daily minimum of hours, pay and union recognition are the pieces those deals named, so if the incoming company makes you an offer, the useful questions are which of them apply to you and whether it will put them in writing before you answer.

Drivers aren't the only ones on these notices. Seattle's listed technicians, dispatchers, supervisors and a clerk, and the St. Louis notice covered about 70 monitors, five mechanics or technicians and six office staff, St. Louis Public Radio reported. The hiring terms on record in Fresno and Lawrence were written for drivers, so if you're a monitor, mechanic or dispatcher, whether the incoming company plans to fill your role is a separate question to put to it.

Union membership changes what's available at a yard that's closing or shrinking. The Seattle notice said some of the affected employees were represented by Teamsters Local 174, and Fresnoland described First Student's drivers in Fresno as represented by SEIU Local 521. If you belong to a bargaining unit, the local's business agent or steward can say whether your contract gives bumping rights at another First Student yard and how your seniority would count with a new operator. Non-union employees had no bumping rights under the Seattle notice, so for anyone outside a bargaining unit an incoming operator's hiring terms may matter more.

Older filings can carry another name. A 2020 Oakland notice was filed as FirstGroup America dba First Student, from the years FirstGroup owned the company, and the sale of First Student and First Transit to EQT closed in July 2021, EQT announced, naming them as two FirstGroup subsidiaries in the same deal. If your job was part of the Seattle cut, our page on Washington unemployment benefits sets out how to file a claim there.

A sourced history of First Student layoffs

• June 2026, Seattle operations to shrink by about 60%

  First Student's Washington notice listed 99 drivers among the 111 employees set to go August 17 and said its Lake City Way office would close, leaving the remaining staff to work out of 8250 5th Ave. S.

• April 2026, Red Wing bus facility set to close

  First Student's Minnesota letter tied the closing to losing its Red Wing Public Schools contract and set 49 layoffs between June 16 and June 30, the day it expected to stop operating there.

• April 2026, Waterloo layoffs follow switch to Durham

  Waterloo's district picked Durham instead of a new First Student contract, largely over cost, a district official told KWWL, with First Student's contract set to end June 30 and about 120 employees affected.

• August 2025, part-time bus monitor layoffs in Cincinnati

  First Student's Ohio letter said the local public school district had decided to use fewer of its monitors in the 2025-26 school year, and set layoffs of part-time monitors at its Hamilton Boulevard site, expected to be permanent, for August 20.

• June 2025, Greenwich declines to renew First Student

  About 140 Greenwich school bus drivers faced layoff after the town chose not to renew its First Student contract, News 12 reported, and the company said some might transfer to other districts.

• May 2025, St. Louis layoffs after district picks Zūm

  After St. Louis Public Schools chose not to renew its contract and signed with Zūm, First Student said 218 jobs would end June 30, among them about 137 drivers and 70 monitors, St. Louis Public Radio reported.

What to do if you're laid off from First Student

• File for unemployment in the state where you worked. Benefits run from your filing date, and severance usually doesn't block you. First Student's biggest hubs: California, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas. Somewhere else? Every state is here.
• Apply for financial and hardship assistance. Unemployment supplements income, but food benefits, health coverage and utility help are often available as well. Here's some of what First Student's hub states run: California, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, and every other state is here.
• Mind the health insurance window. Losing coverage opens a 60-day special enrollment period, and an ACA plan usually beats unsubsidized COBRA. Compare your options before the employer coverage lapses, and read how the COBRA clocks run if you are weighing it seriously.
• Get your real runway number. Severance plus savings divided by reality. The calculator takes five minutes.
• Know which clocks are already running. Severance review windows, COBRA election, visa grace periods, and 401(k) rollovers all run on federal deadlines that started at termination. All five deadlines are here.