Several school bus routes were delayed Monday morning as drivers threatened to walk off the job rather than comply with Connecticut’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for public employees, but most districts across the state appeared to experience no major problems.

Gov. Ned Lamont said Monday that the worst-case scenario of several hundreds of drivers failing to show up for work had been averted.

“Thankfully the overwhelming majority of school bus drivers showed up to let kids get back to school for in-person learning,” Lamont said. “A lot of school-bus drivers really care about the kids they’re taking to school. … Maybe they rethought [walking out], and thank God they did.”

Monday marked the deadline for vaccinations for all state and school district employees under an executive order issued by Lamont. Employees who do not wish to get vaccinated can instead undergo weekly COVID-19 testing.

The governor said he expects that most state employees and others covered by the order will comply.

“I think our teachers, out state employees, our school bus drivers all are coming to the same place,” Lamont said. “They’re going to do the right thing, keep themselves safe and keep everybody around them safe.”

Lamont said two towns, Derby and North Haven, had requested two school bus drivers each from the state to cover for absences Monday. In response, the state sent Medicaid drivers to transport children with special needs.

Fran Rabinowitz, executive director of the Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents, said Monday morning that she was aware of a few absent bus drivers across the state but that “most districts seem fine.” In Regional School District 15, which serves Middlebury and Southbury, athletic events may have to be postponed due to missing drivers, Rabinowitz said.

According to the Region 15 website, three school bus routes were delayed Monday morning, though superintendent Joshua Smith said in an email that one of the delays was due to an injured bear in the road, not missing drivers. Smith said five Region 15 drivers total were absent Monday.

Other districts have reported no issues. Officials from Glastonbury, East Hartford, West Hartford, Bloomfield and Cromwell, among others, all said Monday morning that they had little or no trouble with bus drivers coming to work.

A spokesperson for the Manchester school district said two bus routes had run late Monday morning but that he didn’t know the specific reasons.

In a recent survey of drivers by the Connecticut School Transportation Association, 1,558 drivers from 12 bus companies said that they are currently unvaccinated. Of those, 1,331 said they would agree to weekly testing, leaving 227 who planned to refuse the testing requirement.

Because the survey included only 12 of the 67 companies represented by the transportation association, some feared the true number of bus driver holdouts would be even higher. The issue caused particular at a time when school districts nationwide have experienced a shortage of bus drivers.

In the end, however, those fears did not materialize. Jon Hipsher, vice president of the Connecticut School Transportation Association thanked drivers for getting vaccinated or tested and thereby avoiding major disruption.

“Thanks to the committed school bus drivers and managers for promptly following the Governor’s mandate for COVID vaccinations and testing, while at the same time, doing what needed to be done to get Connecticut’s children safely to school,” Hipsher said in a statement.

Courant staff writers Jesse Leavenworth and Don Stacom contributed to this report.