LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Jefferson County Public Schools announced five immediate changes that will be in place when elementary and middle school students get back on the bus Friday morning.

A new bus-tracking app, more staff on buses and increased communication support for parents headline some short-term measures the district hopes will partially smooth over the issues that led to six canceled days of class. The five changes set to be implemented Friday will be done to "increase efficiency, provide bus drivers with additional support, and improve communication with parents," Superintendent Marty Pollio said in a letter to families Thursday:

The changes are listed below:

  • Buses will no longer wait at depots for extended periods of time. If a bus runs exceptionally late, other depot buses will continue their routes, and the late students will be transported by a different bus or JCPS van.
  • School leaders will have access to the Edulog Parent Portal Lite app to help families know where buses are in real-time. This app will also be available for JCPS parents as soon as we finalize our internal systems to support guardian access.
  • Some bus drivers will have a JCPS employee riding with them to help guide them through challenging routes.
  • Additional traffic flow support at some of our highest traffic areas.
  • Increased communication support at bus compounds and the JCPS 485-RIDE Call Center to better answer families' questions.

The most impactful change for parents — once it's available to them — will be the app. The Edulog Parent Portal Lite app shows users when a school bus is scheduled to pick up and drop off a student. Parents can turn on notifications to be alerted when a bus comes within a certain distance of their homes.

The app will not be ready for parents and guardians to use by Friday, but JCPS will have access.

Until the app is available to parents, they can call their child's school — or the 485-RIDE bus hotline —  and staff can pinpoint where the bus is. All schools will have access, district spokeswoman Carolyn Callahan said. The transportation call center will have about 30 people answering phones Friday, a big improvement from the 10 or 11 staffed on the first day of school, Callahan said during a news briefing Thursday afternoon.  

JCPS is asking parents to observe a 45-minute "grace period" after the scheduled arrival time of children before calling to track down their bus.

"Parents should absolutely expect that there will still be buses that are running late," Callahan said. "It is absolutely going to happen. I cannot tell you how late that is going to be, but we are telling folks that that is something you have to anticipate."

All these changes stem from what Pollio called a "transportation disaster" Wednesday, Aug. 9, which was the first day of school for JCPS students. Some students didn't get home until almost 10 p.m. amid new bus routes and school start times. The following morning, JCPS canceled school for Thursday, Aug. 10, and Friday, Aug. 11, an effort by the district to fix the issues. The district then also canceled school Aug. 14-17, opting for a "staggered" restart with elementary and middle school students returning Friday and high school students returning Monday.

Pollio said earlier this week that the district has found that its transportation systems and technologies were "extremely antiquated" and "not where it needed to be." In a news release Thursday, he said that while some kids may still get home late Friday evening, that's simply "the reality right now," citing a bus driver fleet of fewer than 600 a few years after it exceeded 900.

JCPS had 730 routes last year, and that was cut to 600 beginning this year.

Since the rough first day, some drivers said there were too many stops on routes. JCPS has worked to reduce the longest routes and transfer some stops to other drivers, so a student's bus number or bus stop might be different now.

"If you can make alternative transportation arrangements, we encourage you to do so," Pollio said in a news release.

The district recently started using a program developed by a firm called AlphaRoute out of Massachusetts to help 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.

Callahan said personnel from AlphaRoute are in town working with district leaders, though the goal of that work is focused on long-term solutions. The district has asked them to look at efficiency and to get the correct times for all routes, with the additional stops that have been added. Pollio said that when the district was given new routes over the summer from the AlphaRoute system, they had to add about 5,000 additional stops.

In addition to the five changes going into effect Friday, JCPS said Early Childhood Programs will be delayed by "at least" two weeks. The issue, Callahan said, revolves around the availability of buses.

"This was a really difficult decision to make," she said. "We can’t wait to have our youngest kiddos in our schools and at our early childhood centers. But, right now, part of our short-term adjustments, we are using those buses — those early childhood buses — to transport our K-12 students. So it would not have worked out that we could bring early childhood back right now, because we are working on those adjustments and we need those buses at this time."

JCPS has a new "Return to School" website meant to allow parents to check the Bus Finder and get answers to common questions. To access it, click here.

The district is still working on long-term solutions to implement, such as revamping bus routes and giving drivers a GPS system they can operate onboard. Until then, while drivers still have their route directions on paper, many buses will have another district employee — sitting directly behind the driver, Callahan said — guiding them through challenging routes. She said that person will have the list of directions with them, helping the driver wherever he or she is unsure of a turn. That helper will also have a cellphone with them to communicate with the district office or school if needed.

More than 200 JCPS employees volunteered to be that second set of eyes for drivers, and 26 drivers asked for the help, Callahan said.

UPS is also looking into how it could help optimize some of JCPS' longer routes, Callahan said, but that's more of a long-term effort.

"We learned a lot in these last several days," Callahan said. "We learned that we should have had even more eyes on the new plan and on how we were implementing it. A lot of this was implementation. We made massive changes and we didn’t really change the way we were handling the first day. We absolutely should have done that, and that is what we are doing with the changes that we have made.”

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