Laid off from Student Transportation of America.

What Student Transportation of America layoffs have meant for employees

STA told federal regulators in 2026 that renewals of school bus contracts often involve highly visible and intense negotiation among bidders, governments and unions, and that districts that outsource their busing can always go back to running it in-house, according to the Surface Transportation Board's summary of its application. Waco ISD chose that second option for GoldStar's work in 2024, and Eagle Mountain-Saginaw ISD made the same choice in December 2025 for the 2026-2027 school year. Other contests went to rival contractors. In Columbia, the board approved DS Bus Lines in February 2024, ABC17 reported, and STA's notice for its Columbia workers came 13 months later, in March 2025. STA's notices have followed the school calendar, too. The six from 2024 to 2026 that give an end date all put it between May 29 and June 1.

In Omaha, Kansas City and Waco, the employers taking over the buses offered different rates. Zum advertised $25 to just over $28 an hour in Omaha, where it was targeting 230 drivers, WOWT reported, and a $24 starting rate with benefits for at least 110 Kansas City drivers, plus paid training and certification for anyone not yet certified, according to KSHB, while Waco's district said its $27 was the highest starting rate in the region, per KXXV. STA's own alternative in Jacksonville was a transfer to one of its other Duval terminals, as Action News Jax reported, and STA said it would still serve more than 440 student runs in Duval County the next year. If you're holding a transfer from STA and an offer from the incoming operator at the same time, comparing the hourly rate, the hours, the drive and any paid training can settle which one is worth taking.

A notice's temporary or permanent label is the filer's own description at the time. California's report lists STA's two April 2020 notices under the Mission School Transportation name, 253 jobs in Los Angeles and 56 in Long Beach, as temporary layoffs effective March 13, and STA's filing called its 2020 Milwaukee closings temporary too, School Transportation News reported. Sunrise's 2026 Rockford notice, filed before STA owned Sunrise, carries the other label, a permanent closing in Illinois's WARN report. A temporary label says the employer expected the stoppage to end, but it doesn't set a return date or promise the same job back, and a permanent one says the employer didn't expect that work to come back to that site. If your notice from STA or one of its companies says temporary, the date it gives is still the date your work stops.

A notice can carry a name other than STA's. GoldStar Transit, which STA's own 2025 release calls part of its family of companies, filed the Texas notices for Waco and Eagle Mountain-Saginaw, and Dairyland Buses and Lakeside Buses, which School Transportation News described as STA subsidiaries, filed the 2020 Milwaukee notice. Tremblay's Bus Co. in Massachusetts joined STA earlier in 2026, School Bus Fleet reported. Sunrise is a different case. It filed its June 2026 Rockford notice before STA bought it in September, so that notice was Sunrise's own, and our WARN tracker counts it with STA's because Sunrise belongs to STA now. If your notice or paycheck carries the GoldStar, Dairyland, Lakeside, Tremblay's or Sunrise name, STA is the parent company behind it today.

For a last day in Texas, Missouri, Nebraska or Illinois, the four states where the notices since 2025 were filed, our unemployment pages for Texas, Missouri, Nebraska and Illinois set out how a claim starts.