LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Thousands of Jefferson County Public Schools (JCPS) parents have been trying to figure out how to get their kids to new bus stops that were announced just over two weeks before the first day of school.
"My whole day is going to be focused around the bus stop," Emily Flowers said, who lives in far east Jefferson County with two kids in JCPS.
Many parents who have reached out to WHAS11 over email or Facebook say their stops are farther away or at inconvenient times for them. JCPS has said it is unable to send a full map of all the new routes or a comparison to last year.
Flowers has a 7th-grade son named Cash who goes to Noe Middle School. Last year, his bus stop was just around the corner. When the new bus routes were announced on July 24, Flowers plugged in her address and her son's school and got a red message telling her her son didn't have a bus stop.
"There's a phone number on the bus finder site --I tried calling it-- and you get an announcement saying there's no one available, and it hangs up," Flowers said. "Communication is key, and it has been very difficult to reach anybody."
Around the middle of last week, she got a letter in the mail from Noe Middle School saying her son did have a bus stop on the other side of their neighborhood. The stop is technically .4 miles away from their house, but it runs along a section of Shelbyville Road that has no sidewalks. So, Flowers says her son will walk the long way with sidewalks, which would be 1.1 miles each way.
"Non-negotiable, he will not be walking on Shelbyville Road," she said.
JCPS has said the consolidation of routes was needed to stop the persistent issues from the 2022-23 school year where many kids were routinely multiple hours late to class because of a bus driver shortage.
The district now has more drivers than routes and believes this is the correct solution. Superintendent Dr. Marty Pollio has said "the average distance kids have to walk to a bus stop is .25 miles, but some will have to go farther."
If a parent has an issue with the stop they were given, they are encouraged to fill out a Bus Stop Request Form. A district spokesperson said Wednesday they have gotten thousands of these requests so far, and not all of them will be fulfilled before the first day of school on Aug. 9.
"We have teams right now --they worked dawn to dusk over the weekend both Saturday and Sunday-- to address families who have put in this bus stop request form. We'll continue to do that, up until the first day of school," Dr. Pollio said during a Monday back-to-school press conference.
Around 4 p.m. Wednesday, a JCPS spokesperson told WHAS11 the transportation team has been working on the Flowers' request, and they do plan to add a new bus stop for them on their side of the neighborhood, which will be .4 miles with sidewalks.
"Omg! That's amazing! I'm impressed!" Flowers said over text when we gave her the news.
WHAS11 will be doing several JCPS school bus stories before and after the first day of school. If you have any questions you would like addressed, please email tbreese@whas11.com.
JCPS provided this statement in response to today's story:
To deal with a shortage of bus drivers, JCPS has added seven new start times and hired an engineering firm to come up with a new bus route/bus stop plan that would cut the number of bus routes and stops. The result is that some bus stop locations have been changed and some students will have to walk farther to a stop. We have made it easy for parents to notify us with a request through the Bus Stop Request Form. We have received a few thousand requests from families to change or add bus stop locations. We continue to review those requests. We are making determinations on each request and making changes as we find the need with a priority on an obvious safety concern (i.e. crossing a 4 lane road to get to a stop) and lack of a stop at a child care center. As stated on the Bus Stop Request form, we do not expect to have answers to every request by the first day of school.
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