US Attorneys Office accepts JCPS' offer to inspect more than 8,000 documents related to bus issues

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- School bus delays and missed instruction at Jefferson County Public Schools is getting the attention of the federal government.

The state's largest school district said there is no Department of Justice investigation right now, but JCPS is answering questions from the U.S. Attorneys Office.

WDRB News obtained 20 pages of emails including questions U.S. Attorneys asked JCPS. Federal officials asked JCPS about bus level and school level data districtwide for late buses, before and after fall break, which went from Oct. 3-6.

JCPS was also asked about how the school district is implementing education for multilingual and special education students, specifically at Kenwood Elementary School.

Jefferson County Board of Education member Linda Duncan told WDRB News that someone complained about multi-lingual students missing class time because buses were running behind. Kenwood Elementary School has a high number of multilingual students.

On Nov. 13, Jessica Malloy, the assistant U.S. attorney, said her office will come to JCPS to review more than "8,000 pages of documents to determine which if any we need." Those thousands of pages are for bus delays for the first 21 days of school. The district says every school kept records differently.

"Some schools kept a single sheet for each bus, with a list of each student," said Kevin Brown, general counsel for JCPS. "Some logged the bus as being late, but not necessarily the exact time it arrived. Others logged the time the bus arrived each day, but did not log the number of students on the bus that day or the names of those students. We have stacks of paper records. The best estimate is that there are approximately 8,000 pages of paper records. They are granular, but they do not capture any demographic data."

JCPS said there are "77 multilingual students who are assigned to ride the three buses at Kenwood that have been identified as having repeated late arrivals." But some of those acre car-riders, the district said.

"This leaves 48 ML students who have had repeated late arrivals due to transportation," JCPS said in the documents.

JCPS said 10 are missing their English Language Development instruction time and the district outlined other students who were missing instruction. But JCPS then detailed a plan that shows how those students are still getting the help they need through various programs.

JCPS broke down the number of minutes lost for Kenwood's multilingual, free and reduced lunch and special education students.

Data shows for the first week JCPS was able to collect the information in October, 421 students were late because of buses losing 4,167 minutes of instruction time which is about an average of 10 minutes lost per student.

Kenwood has a student population of 589.

JCPS had several bus delays because of bus driver shortages. The district consolidated bus routes and staggered school start times this year to help with the issue. Bus issues were so bad that school was cancelled after the first day of school for more than a week.

Currently JCPS transports around 65,000 students. JCPS said it currently has 568 routes, and 578 full-time drivers. But it averages 44 drivers per day calling out.