LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The start of the 2024-25 school year for Jefferson County Public Schools (JCPS) is less than three weeks away. Bus drivers are about to begin practicing their brand new routes, giving them one additional week of practice compared to last year.
“I think everything is going to be fine; I think it’s going to be a good year this year,” Nuchelle Harvel said, who’s been an “over-route driver” for JCPS for 18 years.
Harvell has been a bus driver for a total of 20 years. She’s also had a leadership position with Teamsters Local 783, who has over 500 JCPS bus driver union members, for four years.
Last year, the district tried to debut new school bell times, a new student assignment plan, and all-new bus routes on the same day. The last student wasn’t dropped off until 10 p.m. on the first day of school last year, and the district had to cancel school for several days after to get a handle on the issues.
“Last year was a bit of a rough start; one of the things we wanted to do this year was try our best to not reinvent that crisis that we were in last year,” Justin Scharrer said, the new president of Teamsters Local 783.
A company from North Carolina did an audit of the first day of school back in March. Prismatic Services said the issues were trying to do too many new initiatives to start the year, poor communication with AlphaRoute, and bus route changes made up until the very last minute.
JCPS made a swath of changes to the bus routing plan this year, including designing all the routes in-house with the “JCPS routing team”, cutting bus transit to the majority of magnet and traditional schools, and having a “freeze period” where no changes can be made to the bus routes from July 22-Aug. 8.
"My heart goes out to the magnet and traditional schools, but we had to do something,” Harvell said.
The bus drivers and special needs assistants are the only ones who have seen the new routes thus far. The drivers just finished their bidding based on seniority for the routes, and July 22 will begin a week of optional practice days for them. The drivers will be fully paid up to eight hours every day that they wish to practice.
Harvell said after looking at several of the routes, they are much more localized compared to last year’s routes.
"It'll be much better not to do this route, than to do the ones that we're doing now,” Harvell said as she held a picture of one of the most confusing routes from last year.
“We are proud of the work taking place throughout the district to ensure JCPS students have a successful first day of school. We created our own internal routing team, which has allowed us to regionalize routes and implement mirroring for more than 60% of our routes,” JCPS spokesperson Carolyn Callahan said over email.
Scharrer said if all goes according to plan, the last student will be dropped off before 6 p.m. on the first day of school.
The district will try to “restore” possibly thousands of magnet and traditional routes once the school year begins, if they think they can do it.
While the current picture of the first day of school is very rosy, the district could be court-ordered to revert to last year’s routes, or a plan that majorly restores magnet and traditional routes.
Attorney Teddy Gordon and a group of parents are suing JCPS, saying the new transit plan violates their student’s civil rights by denying them the ability to go to some of the district’s best schools. Judge Rebecca Grady Jennings denied the plaintiff’s petition for a temporary restraining order on Monday but gave them until July 22 to refile.
Scharrer said if they must go back to last year’s routes, it will be nearly impossible, and all parents in the district can expect major disruptions.
“It would be catastrophic; everything, and all the preparation that we've went in to make a seamless first day of school would be totally upended to the point that there's just no way we can haul that many children to school,” Scharrer said.
JCPS told WHAS11 earlier this month that the new “bus teller” website where parents can see their kid’s bus assignment would go live on Monday. But Friday afternoon, a spokesperson said it was doubtful.
“Bus Teller will launch next week, though I'm hesitant to say a day and time right now; the CrowdStrike outages did impact a few of our systems today,” Callahan said.