Keeping good instructors without breaking the bank

Why instructors leave, as I see it

In my read of the job, good instructors usually leave over the schedule and how they are treated. I found no published study of why instructors leave, so this list is my own judgment.

• A schedule they cannot plan a life around. Finding out on Friday what Monday looks like.
• Unpaid dead time. A 10am lesson and a 2pm lesson with nothing in between.
• Driving all over the county. In Southern California, Fontana at 9, Riverside at noon and Rancho Cucamonga at 3.
• A car they do not trust. Soft brakes or a dash light nobody cleared.
• No say in their own calendar. Being handed a route without being asked.
• Being the last to know. A parent cancels at 7am and the instructor finds out at 9am, in the driveway.

Each of these can be fixed without a raise.

Give them a schedule they can plan around

A predictable week answers the first three items on that list and costs nothing. Publish the schedule two weeks ahead and keep to it, because someone arranging childcare around your bookings needs it to hold.

Group lessons into blocks in one area, so an instructor teaches three in a row instead of three spread across nine hours. In California, blocks also keep you clear of a pay rule on gaps in the day, covered below. Ask before you move anyone's shift, and get every cancellation to the instructor before they leave home.

Thank them in ways that cost nothing

Praise the specific thing an instructor did, like getting a student through parallel parking after two failed tries, and tell the parent which instructor did it. Give first pick of next month's blocks to whoever earned it, and give the nervous first-timers to the instructors who ask for them.

Skip gift cards as a reward. Federal tax rules, which apply in every state, let an employer leave small, occasional perks such as coffee or holiday gifts out of pay, but the IRS says cash and its equivalents, "no matter how little," never qualify. A gift card goes in wages on the W-2 with income tax, Social Security and Medicare withheld, so first pick of next month's blocks is the simpler thank-you.

Pay rules, with California as the worked example

Pay law differs a lot from state to state. The rules below are California's, used as a worked example, and your state's rules may be quite different or may not exist at all. Check your own state labor department before you change how you pay anyone. The exact laws behind each California rule are listed in Sources.

Employees or contractors, the California example

In California, your instructors are almost certainly employees, and the pay rules in the rest of this guide are written for employees. California's contractor test, called the ABC test, treats every worker as an employee unless you prove three things. One of them is that the work is outside the usual course of your business, and teaching people to drive is a driving school's usual business, so a driving school cannot pass.

California's DMV likewise defines an instructor as "An employee of the school," and the license application asks for the employing school's business license number. Knowingly calling an employee a contractor carries a California penalty of $5,000 to $15,000 per violation, or $10,000 to $25,000 for a pattern, plus a signed notice posted on your website or premises for a year. Massachusetts uses the same three-part test, and other states use their own.

Drive time between lessons, the California example

In California, a drive you send an instructor on between lessons counts as paid work time. California's wage rules for this kind of work count all "the time during which an employee is subject to the control of an employer," and a route you assigned is under your control.

In California, the drive to the first lesson and home from the last works differently. Under California's Labor Commissioner's guidance, it is not paid when the site is within reasonable distance of the instructor's usual work area, or when the instructor has no regular site. When you send an instructor much farther than their normal commute, the extra time is paid.

Federal wage law, the Fair Labor Standards Act, applies in California and every other state to the businesses it covers, which are those with at least two employees and $500,000 a year in sales, plus some workers at smaller ones. Where it applies, it also counts travel from job site to job site during the workday as hours worked.

Cancelled lessons after the instructor shows up, the California example

In California, an instructor who reports for a scheduled shift and gets less than half of it is owed pay for half the scheduled day, never less than two hours or more than four, at their regular rate. California's wage orders call this reporting time pay.

Say an instructor is scheduled for three two-hour lessons, 8am to 2pm. They teach the 8am, the 10am and noon cancel, and they go home. Half of six hours is three, so they are paid for three, the two they worked plus one hour of reporting time pay.

California's Labor Commissioner lists three situations where reporting time pay does not apply:

• Threats to employees or property, or civil authorities recommending that work stop.
• A failure of public utilities, such as electricity, water, gas or sewer.
• An Act of God or another cause outside the employer's control, such as an earthquake.

In California, it also does not apply when an instructor's regularly scheduled shift is under two hours. The guidance does not say whether a student's cancellation counts as a cause outside your control, so ask your payroll service or an employment lawyer before relying on it.

Other states set their own rules. New York owes at least four hours at minimum wage, or the scheduled shift if shorter, and Massachusetts owes three hours at minimum wage when a scheduled shift of three hours or more is cut short.

Gaps in the middle of the day, the California example

In California, a workday broken up by unpaid time you set, other than real meal or rest breaks, is a split shift, and under the wage orders it earns an extra hour at the minimum wage. That is $16.90 as of January 1, 2026, or a higher local minimum where there is one. In California, higher pay counts toward that hour, so you owe only the amount by which the day's total pay falls short of the minimum wage for the hours worked plus one. The blocks described earlier avoid the question.

Paying back what instructors spend, the California example

In California, you repay what instructors spend doing the job. California's expense law covers "all necessary expenditures or losses incurred by the employee in direct consequence of the discharge of his or her duties." A California appeals court held in 2014 that employees who must use personal cell phones for work calls are owed "a reasonable percentage of their cell phone bills." For their own car, California's Labor Commissioner accepts the IRS mileage rate as reasonable.

In California, the same law makes you cover the attorney's fees an employee pays to enforce it, so a small unpaid phone bill can grow. A written policy that pays a set share of each phone bill and mileage at the IRS rate handles it. Illinois has a similar rule.