LOUISVILLE, Ky. — A post on social media claims some students were getting home an hour later than Jefferson County Public School (JCPS) officials said they did on Thursday's first day of school.
"It is 8:17 p.m., kids are just getting dropped off," the woman says in the video shared to Facebook Thursday night.
As of Friday morning, the video has received more than 400 comments and over 300 interactions.
Many of comments include parents questioning whether the district was lying.
THE QUESTION
Were JCPS students dropped off after 8 p.m. on Thursday?
THE SOURCE
Carolyn Callahan, spokesperson for JCPS
THE ANSWER
WHAT WE FOUND
According to JCPS, the last student was dropped off by 7 p.m. Thursday night. That's hours earlier compared to last year, when major transportation issues caused the last student to get home around 10 p.m.
In a statement, the district said 98% of bus riders had been dropped off at their bus stop by 6:30 p.m. At 6:48 p.m., there was only one bus on the road with four siblings inside.
JCPS spokesperson Carolyn Callahan said the bus seen in the video on social media, Bus 0549, is not one of the district's transportation buses.
"That is an activity bus," she said. "Those buses take kids home after sports practices and activities."
Callahan added the bus was bringing football players home from practice at Pleasure Ridge Park High School on Thursday.
Smooth first day, but not perfect
Although back-to-school busing went smoother than the year prior, JCPS Superintendent Marty Pollio said there is still room for improvement.
Buses were mostly on time picking up and dropping students off. The biggest issue was caused by traffic from longer lines of cars of parents picking up and dropping off their students.
Even the chairman of the JCPS school board, Corrie Shull, waited hours to pick up his daughter.
"We've got some work to increase efficiencies, we've got some buses that we have that are overcrowded," Pollio said Thursday night. "Finally we've got some traffic patterns at our schools that we're gonna have to improve on. Some are just always gonna be difficult traffic patterns based upon the fact that the streets they're on, and the amount of people that are coming."
Make it easy to keep up-to-date with more stories like this. Download the WHAS11 News app now. For Apple or Android users.
Have a news tip? Email assign@whas11.com, visit our Facebook page or Twitter feed.
