LOUISVILLE, Ky. — In a new report released Monday, an outside auditing company says Jefferson County Public Schools didn't have the technology to overhaul its bus systems in the summer of 2023, tried to rollout several major new initiatives at the same time without understanding how difficult it would be, and suffered from "sub-optimal" work from AlphaRoute, the company it hired to design the routes.
Prismatic Services from Charlotte, North Carolina released the report Monday. The report was titled "Phase 1" and solely focused on the first day of school and the circumstances that led up to it. A district spokesperson said he expects a Phase 2 report to be released as well.
The board of education voluntarily sought out this report and the district paid for it. A spokesperson told WHAS11 Monday the cost of the audit was $224,913.
The report starts out by outlining three major initiatives the district rolled out all on the same day, August 9, 2023.
1. The new School choice plan, which gave students in "choice zones" (downtown and west end), a choice between a neighborhood school or a far away school.
2. A new nine bell start time system.
3. "Optimized" routes designed by AlphaRoute, a company founded by MIT grads in Massachusetts.
While it was said between 2020 and 2022 that the transportation department should be involved in school choice plan, the report said "It does not appear the transportation department was directly involved in the establishment of the choice zone boundaries."
The transportation department provided an estimate that the school choice initiative (SCI) would lead to a need for an additional 100 routes, but district staff also noted that "no constraints" were placed upon those leading the SCI discussions.
The report also accuses JCPS of mischaracterizing the number of students who chose to go their neighborhood school once the option was given to them.
"Although some JCPS communications to the board indicated that as much as 72% of families opted for the close-to-home school option, the final data set indicate a more even split," the report said. "A majority of families, 55%, did opt for the close-to-home option...Meanwhile, 45% of families opted for the far-away choice."
The report takes a lot of jabs at AlphaRoute, including saying AlphaRoute failed to ask essential questions like state law on how long kids need to be in school every day, which groups of students could ride the bus together, what was the desired distance between stops, "did not ask questions regarding special needs transportation," and more.
Prismatic Services also gives JCPS blame for not taking enough initiative or demanding clear answers in the summer of 2023.
"Some of the JCPS responses indicate a lack of knowledge as to what would be acceptable operationally. In three instances, the JCPS response was followed by a question mark, likely indicating that the district representative did not know what figures JCPS was then using for those parameters," the report said.
The report also included a spreadsheet of changes Prismatic said AlphaRoute (AR) made after getting parameters from JCPS. Many of the changes, the report said, made cutting down the number of buses easier, but also made it difficult to complete the new routes as planned.
These changes included:
- JCPS telling AR that buses should arrive at schools 15-20 minutes before school. AR changed that to 5 minutes.
- JCPS telling AR to allot 10 seconds for drop-off or pickup of each student. AR changed that to 5 seconds.
- JCPS telling AR the maximum time of a bus ride should not exceed 60 minutes. AR changed that to 70 minutes for non-magnet students and 90 minutes for magnet students.
WHAS11 reached out to AlphaRoute about these claims Monday and the company said these changes were at the direction of JCPS.
"The Prismatic Services audit of the JCPS transportation system released today appears to lack important details about AlphaRoute’s engagement with the school district. The majority of the issues related to AlphaRoute that you outline in your questions were the result of direct guidance or approvals from JCPS staff or timelines imposed on the project by JCPS staff or procedures," the company said over email.
The report also accused the district of breaking its own internal codes on sole source contracts when selecting AlphaRoute. JCPS did not have open bidding for any of its work with AlphaRoute, work that has totaled over $850,000.
According to page 15 of the district's Procurement Regulations, section 3.24.1, "The Director of Purchasing may contract or purchase through noncompetitive negotiation only after a written determination is made by a designee of the Superintendent that competition is not feasible and that... (b) There is a single source within a reasonable geographic area..."
The first time AlphaRoute and JCPS worked together was May 27, 2021. In that contract, GIS Services Director Brent West had to sign a form saying why it would be a sole source contract. Under the section "Explain why the vendor is a single source:" West said only "See attached". Attached was a letter from AlphaRoute explaining why it was the only company that could do the work.
"There was not any documentation provided to Prismatic indicating whether a district staff member performed any research to determine if in fact the vendor selected was the only vendor available," the report said. "Moreover, it does not appear that JCPS verified assertions made by AR."
WHAS11 was aware of this months ago and brought it up to JCPS spokesperson Mark Hebert who said, "While we were aware of companies that could do routing work, AlphaRoute was the only one that we could find that had the bell time optimization module as well," Hebert said over email in September.
Hebert said Monday the district is no longer working with AlphaRoute and while some contracts may be active, no more money will be paid.
"We are not using AlphaRoute. In January the Board of Education approved the establishment of a routing team for JCPS. We have hired six employees whose job is to establish transportation routes for next school year," Hebert said Monday.
The report makes over 20 recommendations ranging from specific to general. Generally, Prismatic says JCPS need to improve its internal communication as well as communication with vendors, needs to be prepared with backup plans if vendors are late on deliverables, leaders need to understand that making several large-scale changes the same week is difficult, and more.
Specifically, Prismatic says JCPS needs to stop relying so heavily on sole source contracts and research entities better before contracting with them.
Prismatic also noted that an "unusually high" amount of JCPS staff members were hesitant to give their names in interviews, for fear of retaliation. And several staff members knew August 9 would have a myriad of issues but felt JCPS had a “negative environment in the central office that discouraged questioning.”
► Contact reporter Travis Breese at tbreese@whas11.com, or on Twitter.
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