First Student bus service to discontinue 60% of operations in Seattle, lays off 100+ employees
Jun 18, 2026, 8:27 AM | Updated: 12:25 pm
School buses sit idle in a bus yard. (Photo: Karen Ducey, Getty Images)
(Photo: Karen Ducey, Getty Images)
The bus company that serves Seattle Public Schools, First Student, announced Wednesday it is laying off 111 employees at two Seattle facilities.
The layoffs are slated to take effect on Aug. 17 as the company is permanently discontinuing roughly 60% of operations at the two Seattle locations, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) filing.
Employees will be laid off from the company’s Olympic Hills facility located at 13525 Lake City Way and its site in South Park at 8250 5th Avenue S.
Michael Hamel, the area general manager, noted that the office in Olympic Hills will close, and the remaining employees will be transferred and operate out of the South Park site.
In total, the layoffs include 99 bus drivers, four technicians, four supervisors, three dispatchers, and one clerk.
The layoffs come more than a year removed from the bus driver’s strike that led to a new agreement between First Student and Teamsters Local 174, the union that is representing a portion of the company’s workforce, according to KIRO 7.
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