LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Two Louisville parents filed a federal civil rights lawsuit Thursday alleging that local public school officials are discriminating against their children and other Black students by denying them transportation options for the upcoming school year.

Mary Bledsaw and Taryn Bell claim in the suit that their kids — who are set to attend Male High School, Central High School and Whitney Young Elementary School in August — may now have to enroll in less desirable neighborhood schools due to a lack of bus service.

The decision to cut transportation to magnet and traditional schools, the parents allege, will "intentionally cause high schools in lower socio-economic neighborhoods to become overcrowded, continued havens for violence, and cause abysmal educational outcomes to become even worse."

Named as defendants are Jefferson County Public Schools, Superintendent Marty Pollio and the elected Jefferson County Board of Education. The school district said in a statement, "We just received a copy of the lawsuit and are reviewing it."

The legal action stems from the school board's April decision to cut transportation to all magnet and traditional schools, with the exception of Central and Western high schools, which both have a 75% threshold of students on free or reduced lunch. The lawsuit filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Louisville by attorney Teddy Gordon, makes no mention of the exception, which would make a portion of Bledsaw's argument moot.

JCPS maintained that the only option to keep buses on schedule and students on time is to cut transportation for all magnet and traditional schools, which would impact more than 14,000 students. For the last several years, JCPS has struggled to recruit enough bus drivers, resulting in buses running delayed, up to several hours. Last school year, the state's largest school district dealt with the same problems.

To address the busing issues, in February 2023, Pollio began to campaign a plan that would change the district start times from just two, 7:40 a.m. and 9:05 a.m., to nine times ranging from 7:40 a.m. to 10:40 a.m. Most schools would start at 7:40 a.m., 8:40 a.m., or 9:40 a.m.

However, the first day of school with new start times and bus routes, proved to be disastrous for the district. The first day was plagued with bus delays in the morning and the afternoon. Some students' buses never showed up that morning, and others didn't get dropped off from school that evening until almost 10 p.m.

JCPS decided to cancel classes for the remainder of that week and later extended that closure to include most of the following week as it implemented a staggered return for students. During an interview with WDRB in December 2023, Pollio said part of the problem the district faced is that from the introduction of the start time proposal, to the first day of school, JCPS lost around 100 bus drivers.

Teddy Gordon, an attorney representing both parents, said cutting transportation for all those students violates their civil rights under the 14th Amendment.

"They don't realize how it affects individual people, and that's why we are here today," Gordon said in a news conference Thursday afternoon. "... They're violating those orders because (this) disproportionately affects African American students."

Now, the affected parents are left to figure out what the next school year will look like. In Thursday's lawsuit, Bledsaw and Bell claimed the kids' civil rights are being "eviscerated by Defendants' edict of April 10, 2024." They said they placed their kids in magnet and traditional schools because of the quality of the education and "to decrease the achievement gaps between African American students and Caucasian students of 15 to 60% which has existed for three generations of students attending JCPS."

They now may be forced to lose benefits of those schools, they said in the lawsuit, because their kids can no longer get to and from school each day. Both said there is no public transportation from their homes to Male, Central or Whitney Young. Uber and taxi service isn't financially viable, so the children and others may not be forced to go to their neighborhood school.

Bledsaw's children are an incoming junior at Male and freshman at Central, the lawsuit says. Now, she said they may be forced to go from Male and Central, both "one of the best high schools in Kentucky," to Valley High School, "one of the worst high schools in Kentucky."

"It's going to be an additional strain with him either waiting at the school or trying to get other parents with carpooling," Bledsaw said of her son at Male. "And that's going to be a huge drain on us."

The lawsuit says Bell's child, an incoming fifth-grader at Whitney Young, is a special needs student whose teacher and therapist recommend he not change schools.

"It is the best environment for his education needs," the lawsuit says.

Bell said her child may now be forced to go from Whitney Young a "title 1 magnet school," to Martin Luther King, "one of the worst schools in Kentucky."

"I'm going to be on TARC or public transportation all day," she said. "So it's going to really put a financial strain on."

All three schools, the lawsuit says, "breached their educational contract with (the children) and other African American students by intentionally denying them transportation which had been previously provided to comply with prior orders to guarantee equal protection of the 14th Amendment and discriminated against African American students."

This story will be updated.

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