New audit places blame on JCPS, AlphaRoute for transportation disaster on first day of school

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- The results of a new audit into Jefferson County Public Schools reveal what led up to the transportation disaster on the first day of school for thousands of Louisville students.

Those results were released Monday, a day before the Jefferson County Board of Education will vote to potentially cut transportation to thousands of students.

In 248 pages, the report 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 in August.

Relying on "gut feelings" about ridership, and "bad habits of working in silos," are just a few problems found when reviewing what went wrong with JCPS' transportation on Aug. 9, 2023, forcing the district to cancel school for a week.

"I don't want us to find ourselves in a similar situation on the first day of school next year," Board Member James Craig told WDRB News on Monday. "I'm frustrated with the entirety of the results."

Prismatic Services, a Charlotte-based consulting group, conducted the audit into JCPS, ordered by the board of education. Despite some limitations in what data the district handed over to the consulting group, and concerns from employees about "retaliation" during interviews, it provided the comprehensive report.

"What I would expect going forward is that the administration takes all of the findings and the recommendations from the audit seriously," said Craig.

In part, the audit found JCPS to blame. It said the district did not include its transportation department in a majority of the conversations around implementing new school start times and student assignment — which were two major changes for the district at the start of the 2023-24 school year.

The new student assignment plan, passed in 2022 and implemented for the 2023-24 school year, allowed students in a designated "Choice Zone," primarily made up of west Louisville, to attend school close to home or select a group of schools based off their address. The district offered the choice to students entering kindergarten, sixth and ninth grades, in effort of an easy transition and allowed students to remain at schools they started at.

"The phased-in approach was purposefully designed to allow for a smoother transition and provided time for students, parents, and the community to adjust to the changes, and to reduce the number of school transitions for students. However, operating on dual boundaries (“grandfathering”) likely created a greater burden on transportation," the audit read. "The approved School Choice plan did not adequately consider the impacts on transportation, particularly the grandfathering component."

The audit also found the district accepting late student assignment applications as a problem.

"Late applications resulted in late school assignments. The transportation department had minimal time to edit and reconfigure bus routes and stops to ensure all eligible students received transportation," the report read. "The district should adopt a default school assignment process for students who do not complete an application."

The change to start times was another major change for the 2023-24 school year. The district implemented nine staggering start times ranging from 7:40 a.m. to as late as 10:40 a.m. Most schools start at 7:40 a.m., 8:40 a.m. or 9:40 a.m. It was a stark change from its previous two start times, 7:40 a.m. and 9:05 a.m.

The report stated that the start times and routing solution provided by AlphaRoute to JCPS, "suffered from myriad design flaws."

"This has created unacceptably long workdays for a number of bus drivers, as well as high potential for regular daily delays for schools with the later school start times," it read.

As for lack of communication between the transportation department and the district, the audit revealed the transportation director asked to be part of conversations regarding routing and start times prior to Aug. 9, but was denied.

"The former COO (chief operations officer) noted that he was not allowed to invite the transportation director to SST/RO (school start time/routing operations) planning meetings with the superintendent."

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

"I'm frustrated that the communication channels were not as, I guess, as open as you would have expected them to be from the outside looking in," Craig said.

"July is typically the time when the district adds stops, makes last minute changes, and incorporates new additions into already finalized routes. The delivery of AR (Alpha Route) routes on July 17 eliminated half the days typically used for this kind of work."

The audit also found the routes for drivers to be over-complicated and too long.

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

Prismatic also included the following recommendations to the district:

Develop systematic procedures for communication and collaboration between departments relegated to school choice and schedule ongoing reviews of school choice zones and boundaries with the district transportation department to ensure students receive transportation services to their choice schools as appropriate.
Assign default schools to students who do not complete a school choice application by the established deadline.
Review options for adjusting school start times for 2024-25.
Review options for moving schools on mini-tier start times to a major-tier start time.
Review options for adjusting all secondary schools to the 8:40 a.m. or later school start time for 2024-25.
Reestablish and adhere to an annual routing timeline.
Rework routes created by Alpha Route.
Create more effective communications processes around routing.
Adopt an integrated routing, GPS, and camera system.
Improve the district's Professional Services Contract administration by formally designating a contract administrator or contract manager for each contract and develop specific responsibilities for the position.
Improve the timing of payments in Professional Services Contracts and Data Privacy Agreements to help ensure the district receives satisfactory services before making payments to vendors.
Improve Professional Services Contract documents' scope of services to help ensure the district receives the services that it needs and is paying for.
Improve the district process for using Sole Source contracting.
Include representatives of all departments in major initiative planning.
Provide better and documented information to the school board and the public regarding major initiatives.
Evaluate the potential for implementing greater depot use.

"It is incumbent upon us to demand excellence on day one of this new system next year," said Craig.

The audit also included the results of an anonymous principal survey, which outlines issues JCPS principals are dealing with every day amid the district's transportation troubles.

More than three-quarters of principals surveyed said it has some buses still regularly arriving after the start of school. The same amount of principals said they were concerned the first time they saw the new bus routes, and a majority of principals didn't even see the routes until August 2023.

The survey was anonymous, but did ask principals what school they led. Only about half chose to provide their school name.

The audit also referenced concerns from employees about "retaliation" if responses were shared with district staff.

"I would say that any comment of that nature, regarding the culture of the district, is one that the Board of Education needs to take seriously, and its evaluation of the district coming forward," Craig said.

Prismatic also cited project limitations, which included lack of notes regarding meetings, events, or reasoning behind decisions made. It also said JCPS failed to comply with state data retention requirements, adding employees required to retain some emails permanently were missing from the July-August 2023 period.

"In interviews with central office staff, Prismatic expected to be able to gather more email documentation than was ultimately available. Overall, the consulting team concluded there were insufficient data for a recommendation, as it was not possible to document the apparent lack of emails, without being able to prove they had once existed. One possible alternative explanation is that the emails never existed. This possibility was perhaps supported by a JCPS leader who stated they felt encouraged to use cell phone texting instead of district email because it was perceived that texting was less subject to open records requirements."

Prismatic Services found JCPS to not provide "crucial information" when presenting its school choice, start time, or new routing initiatives.

"Throughout the progress of the initiatives, JCPS staff offered unsubstantiated information to the school board," the audit said. "While generalized statements were made to indicate the district understood there would be an impact on transportation by implementing SCI (school choice initiative), the impact on transportation was not quantified and detailed prior to the board’s vote to approve SCI."

JCPS was also found to not have collected and track ridership data beyond KDE requirements once a year.

"Prior to 2023-24 and for 2023-24, JCPS developed its bus routing plan using the number of students eligible to ride. That is not the same as ridership. Most school transportation experts understand that 100% of eligible students never ride."

In response to the audit, a JCPS spokesperson provided a list of ways they're already working to address its routing procedures, which includes an Internal Routing Team and ways to improve communication.

Changes to JCPS' Routing Procedure for the 2024-25 school year:

Create routes entirely in-house through a routing team of six, whose job is to establish bus routes.
Standardized routing timeline for future use.
A pause period for routing, to be determined near the end of the summer to assure we have a cohesive route plan to start the year (mirroring most large districts).
Re-integration of mirroring and geographic regions for bus drivers.
Building starting bus loads at 44 as a baseline.
Remove the ability for schools to add stops (a cause of bus overload) and having this go through the routing team.
Consistent meetings with union partners to update them on changes to routing/transportation timelines.
A longer practice "dry run" period for bus drivers in the summer of 2024 to prepare for the year.

The spokesperson said there would be more discussion on next steps at Tuesday's board meeting.

The board is set to vote on its recommended plan to 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.

Craig told WDRB News he plans to support the recommendation. Board members Chris Kolb, Linda Duncan and Sarah McIntosh have also said they reluctantly support the plan. Corrie Shull has had his concerns over the plan not being equitable for minority students, and it's not clear where Gail Logan Strange and Joe Marshall stand.

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.

The board of education will meet Tuesday at the Van Hoose Education Center at 6 p.m. The board is expected to vote on transportation at that meeting.

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