JCPS touts a 'smooth opening' to the year on school buses

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- The first full week of class began Monday for Jefferson County Public Schools, and educators said the busing plan has been a lot smoother than year's past.

Transporting kids to and from school is no easy task. More than 40,000 students ride buses to school and back home from JCPS schools. And, inevitably, school officials said drivers could miss a stop.

"We always have trouble the first day," said Rob Fulk, chief operating officer for JCPS. "You're going to find some kids we passed by on the bus stop."

But through a few days this year, JCPS said transportation issues are down, and the number of bus drivers are exactly where they need to be.

So far, there are about 630 bus drivers on the roster, and the district is still looking for more. They've also agreed to partner again with the Transit Authority of the River City to help fill the gaps.

The district has also been working to make sure that traffic is under control and bus rider lines are down.

"We created paving projects at about 20+ different schools," Fulk said. "We did a whole lot of lane delineation in our schools, worked with our traffic division inside and our JCPS police so that we could have a smooth opening this year."

But they'd still like help from the community.

"Anytime we start the school year — obviously, we drop 600+ buses into traffic plus the car rider lines at every school — drivers have to adjust," Fulk said. "We always ask to give grace to our drivers. If the stop arm is out, you make sure that you stop, you go slower around the buses, you give some grace to the car rider lines in the community ... We have not seen, this year, the level of traffic as we saw last year. But we also did a lot of work in the past 12 months to remediate that."

Any parents or caregivers with questions can call the bus rider hotline 502-485-RIDE, which is available to parents until Wednesday.

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Thousands of JCPS students return to class Thursday on 1st day of school