LOUISVILLE, Ky. — As Jefferson County Public School officials consider a new start time proposal, schools across the district are still seeing the results of bus driver shortages months into the school year.
At Ramsey Middle School, around 200 kids are late daily, missing as many as three class periods.
Monday, sixth grader Navaurion Thompson arrived around 9:20 a.m. nearly two hours after classes started.
"I think that's a bad thing because it's messing up my education and affecting my grades," he said.
Principal Katie LaDuke said Ramsey students are coming from all over the district. She's worried continued delays will impact students who don't have the option of driving.
"Transportation is very difficult for parents to get out to Ramsey, so if they're coming from the west end, a lot of our kids are either on that late bus and not getting here until 10:30 or 11:00 every day, or they're not coming to school," she said.
LaDuke said the school provides breakfast no matter when students arrive, and has staff on hand to greet them. But she said it's still difficult for students to get into the swing of the day when they arrive late.
"They're walking into a classroom that's already started, so they're having to get in, get seated and get caught up on the instruction that already happened prior to them getting into the building," she said.
Ramsey teachers, like Michael Dennis, are doing what they can to help by working through planning periods, sending virtual assignments and doing one-on-ones to help kids catch up.
"When they do show up, we let them know we're glad to see them, it's not their issue, and we're working to solve it as best we can," he said.
Kids too, are adjusting, doing more solo work or work at home to stay caught up.
"It's annoying mostly, because you're missing stuff and you have to use your time to catch up on things," seventh grader Kylie Harris said.
The problems aren't just hitting Ramsey. More than three dozen routes were delayed Monday, according to JCPS's delay dashboard.
Ramsey students would start school significantly later. Dennis said those minutes matter a lot for the learning of a middle schooler.
"How could it hurt?" he said of the plan. "What we're doing right now isn't successful, so we have to try something different. And if a byproduct of that is kids getting a little more sleep as an adolescent I think that works."
Earlier this month, Superintendent Marty Pollio addressed some parents' concerns about the plan.
LaDuke acknowledged changing start times would be a major change, and possibly inconvenient, for some parents. But she still feels getting kids in class for a whole day is the priority.
"Kids at this age need to feel like they belong to something and it's hard to make that connection when they're not physically here," she said. "At the end of the day it's about the kids."
Pollio is expected to present the start times proposal to the JCPS Board of Education in March.
If approved, the start times would begin next school year.
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