LOUISVILLE, Ky. — During a special Jefferson County Public Schools (JCPS) board meeting, Wednesday, laced with interruptions, storm outs and board in-fighting, board members passed a transportation plan for the 2024-2025 school year.
In a 4 to 3 vote, the board passed the second option presented during the meeting.
Under option two, JCPS will cut transportation to all magnet and traditional schools in the district except high schools where 75% or more of students qualify for free and reduced lunches.
Under the option, both Central High School and Western High School students will have district-provided transportation next school year.
The department looked at 16 different options for next year's plan, JCPS transportation chief operations officer, Dr. Rob Fulk, said, and presented four to the board Wednesday.
These are the four transportation plans that were presented Wednesday:
- Discontinue transportation services for all magnet and traditional schools.
- Only continue magnet and traditional transportation to high schools where 75% or more of students qualify for free and reduced lunches.
- Only continue magnet and traditional transportation to K-12 schools where 75% or more of students qualify for free and reduced lunches.
- No change to transportation services.
The board didn't set aside time for public comment during its special meeting, but that didn't stop several crowd members from speaking over members during the two hour-long meeting—with two storming out.
"This is perhaps one of the most manipulative moves this board has made," F. Bruce Williams said at the start of the meeting before storming out.
Those who support Wednesday's vote say without any transportation changes, Black and brown students will continue to be disproportionately impacted under the district's current set up.
"Personally, I cannot sit on this vote any longer, knowing that we're depriving 30,000 students of instructional time," Dr. Chris Kolb, JCPS board member for district two, said.
As of March 19, JCPS officials said it sits at 569 bus routes with only 553 drivers—and 52 of them absent each day.
The latest projections from JCPS found, after driver call-ins, an estimated 475 drivers will be available next school year.
"I hated making any part of this decision. It just it absolutely crushed me," JCPS Superintendent Marty Pollio said. "Whether it was (coming) back to school after COVID, whether it was student assignment, whether it was (school start times), I mean, this was by far the hardest of my seven years."
Those who oppose option two worry it will inadvertently re-segregate a large swath of Louisville's public schools.
"The community has had buy-in for what we already pushed forward, because we're already fractured enough," Joseph Marshall, JCPS board member for district four, said.
"This just feels like an outcome—by the lack of education, quality education, that these schools provide and afford children who may not have this opportunity," Gail Logan Strange, JCPS board member for district one, said.
The decision comes as the Louisville branch of the NAACP is calling for Pollio's resignation or dismissal.
"The Jefferson County school district is in crisis," Louisville NAACP President, Raoul Cunningham told WHAS11 News Wednesday. "It is suffering from a crisis in leadership."
Two weeks ago, officials with the company Prismatic released an audit—nearly half a year in the making—that documented the district's missteps from August's transportation meltdown to now.
Officials with the company found, "JCPS leadership did not seem to have adequately weighed the time needed to implement such sweeping changes as [School Start Time] or the large-scale [Routing Optimization] it undertook."
Prismatic officials also included a JCPS principal survey in their report. In one question, they found, out of 108 principals surveyed, 97% reported being concerned after first seeing the bus routes for the 2023-2024 school year.
When asked, "Has any of your staff transported students home in the afternoons in their own personal vehicles because of a lack of bus transportation?" almost 80% of the principals surveyed said "yes."
Three board members called for the meeting to be held on Wednesday at 6 p.m. at the VanHoose Education Center, according to a letter released by JCPS spokeswoman Carolyn Callahan.
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