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'Going from one side of town to the other' | JCPS bus driver union leader calls for major route changes

John Stovall of Local 783 said he knew the new routes weren't going to work, because his drivers were sobbing practicing them even before Wednesday.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — John Stovall warned the community the first day of school would be a nightmare for Jefferson County Public Schools. He serves as the union president for Teamsters local 783, which represents almost all bus drivers in JCPS.

He knows an "I told you so" would mean nothing at this point. "It doesn't really solve anything," Stovall said.

JCPS Superintendent Dr. Marty Pollio called Wednesday a "disaster" for the district's transportation department.

Students waited more than an hour for buses to arrive in the morning. Some parents aren't even sure if their child's bus ever stopped at their given bus stop because they gave up waiting, instead choosing to drive their child to school themselves.

The district has now canceled classes for the rest of the week. 

RELATED: JCPS hired an out-of-state company to optimize bus routes. That didn't work. Here's how much it cost.

Pollio said officials will review all bus routes over the next four days to make everything more efficient. Bus drivers will also be paid those days to continue practicing their new routes. Stovall says if a driver works over the weekend, they will get overtime pay.

Stovall says essentially all the effort should be devoted to designing new routes, and not practicing the ones that have proven to be inefficient.

"It's how the routes were laid out...that's the issue. Some of these are going from one side of town to the other. If you're going from the west end to the east end, you're not going to make it on time," he said.

Credit: WHAS11 News
John Stovall.

He said he had heard some of the same horror stories laid out on social media Wednesday about young kids being on a bus for hours with no bathroom breaks or food. He also shared one extreme example of an inefficient route.

"I had a driver drive from Willhoit Compound -- which is all the way out in the East End -- to Valley Station for one kid," Stovall said. 

These new routes had been outsourced by JCPS and were designed by AlphaRoute, a company based in Massachusetts.

JCPS paid the company at least $265,000 to optimize its bell schedule and bus routes ahead of the new school year, according to an original data privacy contract and March amendment obtained by WHAS11.

A district spokesperson said AlphaRoute has been called back in to fix the situation.

WHAS11 asked JCPS if it regretted hiring AlphaRoute or was trying to get out of the data privacy agreement (which runs until November 2025). We received this response: 

"JCPS needed to make a drastic change after so many students missed hours of instruction each day because of late buses due to the bus driver shortage. In order to work through our large, complicated transportation system, we enlisted the help of AlphaRoute," Carolyn Callahan said, chief communications officer for the district.

Stovall says when the plan was initially released, several bus drivers quit. While the district still maintains it has more bus drivers than routes, Stovall said it is still accurate to say there is a bus driver shortage.

"You had drivers transferring out, you had drivers self-demote and go to another department," he said. "So now, we're back to the same thing."

On Thursday, Pollio accepted responsibility for the problems many families faced on the first day of school.

"Once again, I'll say this that lies squarely on my shoulders and my team's shoulders. It is not on bus drivers, it's not on the school, it's on me and my team. And we are going to fix this," he said.

UPS has now offered to meet with JCPS to help fix the situation.

A JCPS spokesperson said if you have already submitted a bus stop request form, do not submit another one. Any changes to a child's bus route will be updated in the Bus Finder app.

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