LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- The Jefferson County Board of Education has tabled a vote on a new transportation plan, that would cut back on buses and eliminate transportation for more than 14,000 students in Louisville, until April.

After a school year of severe bus delays and an inability to recruit enough drivers, the board met Tuesday evening at the Van Hoose Education Center to discuss the plan Jefferson County Public Schools formally recommended last week.

The plan would eliminate transportation for students who attend magnet schools or programs, traditional schools, and students who attend Academies of Louisville programs that are not in their reside school.

Hundreds of JCPS students, parents and some staff, mostly from Central High School, showed up to protest the possible decision on Tuesday.

If approved, JCPS would only transport students who attend their reside school, and other students who are federally required to receive transportation, for example, students protected under the McKinney Vento Act and students who have transportation included in an Individualized Education Program.

Before public comment during Tuesday's meeting, Board Chairperson Corrie Shull said he would be making a motion to include Central High School in the plan that Superintendent Dr. Marty Pollio would be recommending to the board.

Shull has previously raised concerns over the district's transportation plan, and said he worries it would disproportionately affect minorities. 

But Pollio has said a shortage of bus drivers leaves the district with only one option to get students to and from school on time, which is to deny bus service to certain students.

In an email Tuesday, JCPS spokesperson Carolyn Callahan said the plan is the best alternative, even for minority students, among a set of hard choices.

About 6,500 of the 8,000 Black students who currently attend JCPS magnet and traditional schools ride the bus, she said. 

However the audit, conducted by Prismatic Services, investigating the first day of school, refuted that.

"In the September 26, 2023 board meeting, JCPS staff outlined transportation options that included denying service to magnet students. However, doing so would be inequitable," the audit read.

In a letter sent to the board Tuesday morning, the JCPS Advisory Council for Racial Equity said the plan previously failed the district community Racial Equity Analysis Protocol, which is used to identify racial inequities.

When the plan passed, the council said the only difference between it and the one that failed the REAP process was the "makeup of those considering it." 

The council called for Tuesday's vote to be tabled and reconsidered; when the vote does happen for it to be held in a space large enough to accommodate more community members than the district's headquarters; and that board members are given "the alternative and failing REAP analysis prior to voting."

There was also pressure from many in the crowd at the meeting to not cut transportation and find other options. Before the meeting began, a group of Central High School students and families, who have been outspoken in their opposition of cutting transportation to magnet schools, protested. Many of the students said they would no longer be able to attend Central if the plan is approved, and that the dynamic of the school would change.

But after nearly three hours of discussion and public comment, Shull made a motion to table the discussion and a vote until April 16. 

Pollio said he supports putting the vote on hold, citing new perspective from the results of a new audit of JCPS, ordered by the board, released Monday. The audit places much of the blame for the transportation breakdown on the first day of school on the district, and outside routing company AlphaRoute.

When making the motion Shull said it would be "in the best interest" of all, pressing to put the vote on pause as the board has more work to do, and the district needs more time to review the information released in the audit, before voting.

Board Member James Craig, however, did not support moving the vote and opposed Shull's motion, asking if the transportation presentation could be shown first.

Ultimately, the motion was seconded and the board voted 6-1 to table the vote. Craig was the only opposing vote, and asked whether the board was setting the transportation department back even more by not voting on Tuesday. The department's director responded that they are already behind three weeks on creating routes for the next school year.

"I'd rather us take the due diligence rather than another knee-jerk reaction and decimate some schools," Board Member Gail Logan Strange said.

A consultant for Prismatic Services recommended that the board not vote on Tuesday, advice a majority of the board members took.

"If you are making the changes, as some of the speakers said there really won't be any going back," Dr. Tatia Prieto, with Prismatic Services, said. "People will make decisions about where they're going to high school, that will be decided for four years. You will fundamentally alter the fabric of where the district is."

If the plan is approved, the changes would start in the fall at the beginning of the 2024-25 school year.

Board discusses transportation audit

The results of that audit were also discussed in-depth.

The 248-page audit summarizes more than 200 interviews reviews data and findings from school observations. It lays out why and how JCPS, and outside routing company AlphaRoute, failed students on the first day of school back in August. 

Kids are still getting home around dinner time, even months after the first day of school. That first day, Aug. 9, is referred to as "the incident" in the audit. Prismatic Services said that cutting magnet school transportation seemed like a drastic step. 

The firm wrote that the combination of start times and routing solutions suffered from design flaws, and that routes were too long and too complicated. 

Prismatic wrote that there was a disconnect between JCPS and AlphaRoute as they tried implementing guidelines for bus drop-off times. Then, the vendor didn't get the district all of the routes until later in the timeline than promised, giving drivers little time to actually test the routes and find other solutions to the lengthy routes, and other issues. 

Tuesday evening, Tatia Prieto with Prismatic Services, answered a number of questions from board members. If the district is short on bus drivers, Prieto said they can start with conducing more hiring blitzes, and that using bus company contractors could be helpful, adding that it's what some other school districts are doing. 

Prismatic also pointed out issues with the district's implementation of its School Choice plan, and that there was a lack of transportation foresight and solutions, and that there was only a small group involved in decisions who probably thought they had the situation covered. 

The firm wrote that the combination of start times and routing solutions suffered from design flaws and that routes were too complicated and long.

Shull asked why the district's transportation director wasn't involved in more meetings, and Prismatic said there didn't appear to be a reason why he was not. Prieto challenged the board members, and said if they see a problem or lack of communication, to say something.

Prieto said that changes like this don't happen overnight, that until the board gets into the weeds and starts dissecting, it's going to take time. She also challenged board members to ask more questions. Meanwhile there is an urgency to the process, including the timing and planning for the next school year as parents anxiously await a decision from the board so they can start planning.

Prismatic said there is still time to make some changes to the plan, listen to stakeholders and to drivers, to consolidate bus routes that make sense. But there is no time to waste with the 2024-25 school year barely four months away.

The audit also placed blame on AlphaRoute, the outside routing company hired by JCPS to create the bus routes for the 2023-24 school year, stating that the start times and routing solutions it provided to JCPS "suffered from myriad design flaws."

The audit also found the routing company did not provide JCPS with completed bus routes until around July 17, 2023 less than a month before the first day of school and not enough time to make changes. It also cited staff "realize that the routes are in poor condition — some students have been left out, many buses are scheduled to arrive late to many schools, some buses lack afternoon schedules, some runs are too long, some drivers are being sent to unfamiliar areas, etc."

Errors in routing, according to the audit, included:

  • Overlooking Byck Elementary and W.E.B. DuBois
  • Approximately 1,500 grandfathered students were not allocated stops
  • Essential stops, like daycares and YMCA stops, were left out
  • Special education students from 5 schools were missing stops
  • Equipment requirements outlined in IEPs were disregarded
  • In a number of cases, stops were found to be unsafe

In total, the audit said JCPS paid AlphaRoute $858,167.00

The company responded to the audit Tuesday night in a statement, claiming there are "many inaccuracies in the report."

"The Prismatic Services audit of the JCPS transportation system lacks critically important details and misses or misstates many facts about AlphaRoute’s engagement with the school district. The majority of the issues identified in the audit related to AlphaRoute were the result of direct guidance or approvals from JCPS staff or timelines imposed on the project by JCPS staff or procedures. AlphaRoute cooperated fully with this audit and is surprised and disappointed that we were not given an opportunity to provide context to some of the inaccurate claims contained in the report. The driver shortage that JCPS faced and is still navigating resulted in district leaders having to make difficult decisions on a short timeline. As we demonstrated in Louisville, AlphaRoute is committed to always supporting our clients, even beyond the scope of our contract when necessary.”

What led to this transportation plan?

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.

Pollio said staggering times allowed bus drivers enough time to complete a route before having to begin the next.

The plan was met with opposition from several in the district. Concerns about elementary school students getting home after dark were raised, as were families’ schedules being disrupted and no longer aligning.

Despite concerns, the plan passed in March 2023.

Then in July 2023, JCPS announced bus routes would be changing.

The district contracted with Boston-based logistics company AlphaRoute to help create new routes and assign bus stops.

During a news conference over the summer, Pollio expressed confidence that students would not wait on buses more than hour, if that.

"First and foremost, after school, we had said that (for) a lot of buses, 40 minutes was the window we gave AlphaRoute," Pollio said at the time. "So that's just a part of what we have to do, because we have four or five different time periods where they're being bused or picked up on a bus. So 40 minutes is the limit which we wanted."

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.

JCPS has continually blamed a nationwide bus driver shortage as part of the problem.

Now, JCPS has said to completely solve the problem around bus delays, it must cut back on routes.

In Feb. 2024, JCPS said it has 558 drivers, 563 routes, and averages 52 drivers absent daily. That leaves 57 routes uncovered daily.

The district projects by July 2024, it will have 526 drivers. Assuming it averages the same number of drivers out daily, JCPS wants to have 474 or less routes a day, to ensure routes are covered by drivers.

JCPS has presented and discussed three options to its board members since the fall of 2023.

The three options are:

  • No longer provide buses for students who attend magnet and traditional schools, and only transport students who attend reside schools or an A5 school and students who require transportation under federal law, such as students experiencing homelessness or students in special education
  • Operate central hubs where magnet and traditional students could get bused to school from a drop-off point instead of from their neighborhoods
  • Keep the current system and its associated delays

Another option not discussed as in-depth, would allow magnet and traditional schools with a high percentage of students on free or reduced lunch to still receive transportation. However, JCPS said the numbers fluctuate, and would change year-to-year of what schools would meet its set threshold.

"Where I am right now and where we have to look forward facing is the simple mathematical equation that we have less bus drivers than we have routes," Pollio said previously.

JCPS has said eliminating transportation for all magnet and traditional students would get the district to a point it could have fewer routes than drivers.

The meeting was streamed live on the board's YouTube page. You can watch it in the video player below:

More JCPS Transportation Coverage:

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