On September 29, 2025, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) issued a sweeping new rules change,
Combined, these two acts will have major impacts on commercial driving across the United States - including school district transportation systems. If your school bus drivers are not compliant, you could face serious problems.
What Do The New CDL Rule Changes Do?
In short, the new rules drastically restrict which non-citizens are allowed to hold Commercial Driver's Licenses. With only a handful of specific exceptions, only citizens or legal permanent residents will be allowed to drive commercially.
This will exclude numerous groups who are otherwise allowed to work in the United States, such as those in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. States are currently working to respond and formulate their own policies, but it seems likely many drivers will be stripped of their CDLs in short order.
The FMCSA estimates that this will affect nearly 200,000 currently-licensed drivers, with only a few thousand potentially qualifying for exceptions.
How Will The Rule Change Affect Schools?
Since school bus drivers must hold CDLs, every school in the nation will potentially be impacted as well.
This could include loss of drivers, due to their CDLs being taken away. In addition, it will further shrink the already inadequate pool of driver candidates, and will likely make it even more difficult to find new drivers going forward.
Worse, there is the possibility that schools continuing to employ non-qualified drivers could be held legally liable for non-compliance, if that driver were involved in an accident or other damaging incident.
In short, this is something that every district that operates its own bus system should immediately start looking into. Review the employment documentation of your drivers to see if you have anyone who is not a citizen or legal permanent resident. If any are found, we strongly advise contacting your state motor vehicle department - and/or a lawyer - to decide on the best course of action going forward.
BusBoss will continue to watch this situation closely, and comment as new developments arise.
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PRESIDENT
Sonia has been involved with BusBoss since the late 1990’s, and has personally overseen many projects for various customers ranging from large urban and suburban districts to smaller rural school districts from all over the country.