LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- The entire city of Louisville was caught off guard when Jefferson County Public Schools officials canceled classes for Thursday and Friday because of a "transportation disaster" that had some elementary students arriving home as late as 10 p.m.
At least one JCPS bus driver said the problems experienced on the first day of school are the result of a flawed software program that uses artificial intelligence to generate routes. That will come as no surprise to many parents who were already raising red flags about bus stops and routes in the days before the school year started.
As the first day of school approached, parents were already calling officials to complain about unsafe bus stop locations, and, in some cases, no bus stop at all. Despite these red flags, JCPS decided to use the software for the first day of school.
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."
Pollio talked about AlphaRoute on the first day of school before the afternoon and evening bus delays.
"It's a consulting company that has done this is in several other districts," he said. "They won our RFP when we put out our 'Request for Proposal' and obviously we've made sure they have a history of being successful in other places as well."
JCPS is not the first district to use AlphaRoute software. WDRB Investigates found AlphaRoute was not successful for Columbus, Ohio City Schools, that states largest school district with over 35,000 students riding the bus.
District leaders there said CCS paid $1.5 million to purchase AlphaRoute software to use for the last school year. But there were so many issues that CCS reassigned routes to students in January and instead renewed Versatrans routing software that it had used the previous school year.
AlphaRoute is out of Massachusetts and helps with planning routes and assigning bus stop locations. The program — developed by graduates of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — uses artificial intelligence to generate the routes with the intent of reducing the number of routes. Last year, JCPS had 730 routes last year, and that was cut to 600 beginning this year.
JCPS board member Linda Duncan told WDRB that she believes the district spent $265,000 for the AlphaRoute system.
"We had had lots of other districts that had not had success with them, we had districts that did have success with them, so I think we tried to weigh the balance there and try to go with the new approach," Duncan said.
One bus driver told WDRB the problem isn't the new start times. It's the routes, and many drivers struggled with long, unfamiliar routes they had never before driven.
John Stovall, president of Teamsters Local 783, the union that represents bus drivers, said drivers are working Thursday and Friday to practice routes and let the district know what doesn’t work. They can also work Saturday and Sunday, but that's optional.
Stovall said the union relayed its concerns about AlphaRoute to JCPS before school started. Some drivers have already resigned over the situation, including a 14-year veteran with perfect attendance. Stovall said the union believes JCPS should cancel classes next week as well but knows that's not a popular opinion.
When the School Board voted on the project, AlphaRoute's plan said there would be a maximum of a half mile walk to bus stops for elementary school students and up to a mile for middle and high school students. The plan was supposed to eliminate double and triple runs. AlphaRoute estimated the average bus ride time to be 27 minutes with an average of 46.7 students on each run and average of 6.5 students at bus stops making 13,000 bus stops total.
JCPS said the benefits of the new plan are better attendance, older students getting more sleep and the plan would help with the bus driver shortage. The district said it heard concerns before the plan was implemented about people needing more childcare and after school activities being impacted.
In a video statement Thursday morning, Pollio outlined several steps the district plans to take to fix the issue, including: reviewing all bus routes, providing extra training for drivers, streamlining communications between schools and families, and staffing up the 485-RIDE hotline for parents to call with questions.
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- On the eve of first day of school, JCPS parents concerned about bus route changes
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