LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Days before the Jefferson County (JCPS) Board of Education is supposed to vote on a transportation plan, officials want to hear what the community has to say.
This comes after the transportation disaster that happened at the beginning of the school year, when the last student was dropped off at 9:58 p.m. The district canceled classes for a few days afterward as a result.
JCPS board officials have talked about potential transportation options for months, and one option in particular appears to be the front runner.
Option one would only provide buses for students who attend their resides school, elementary school students who attend school in their cluster, special education students who have transportation in their IEP, McKinney Vento students and those who attend alternative or state agency schools.
This would mean students who attend magnet or traditional schools who aren't going to their resides school would not be eligible to ride the bus.
Here are the other three options for next school year headed to a vote soon:
- Create magnet and traditional school hubs, where parents are responsible for getting their students to school and home.
- No transportation changes at all.
- Maintain bus services at magnet and traditional schools, but only to those that meet a 70% threshold of economically disadvantaged students.
As the clock ticks toward Tuesday, a nearly impossible decision now looms for board of education members.
"There's not really a good option," Tanesha Booker, a Central High School PTA parent, said. "If you don't have any bus driver, you know, what do you do?"
With the future of transportation for nearly 13,000 magnet and traditional school students up in the air, parents like Booker worry.
"You know, if there's no students, there's no funding -- then the programs are gone," she said. "My gut is they're -- the school board -- is going to go with option one."
The option took center stage in a new JCPS survey sent out to parents and students Thursday -- just six days before a decision is made.
"There's not even -- it doesn't even ask a whole lot of questions," Booker said. "This survey should've come out a long time ago. I mean, by now the board already has their mind made up...so this survey should've come out months and months ago."
JCPS says if things stay the same, the numbers just won't work for next year. That's why, out of the four options, they're recommending option one to parents. Though, Booker, among other parents at Central High School, take issue with that.
"It's just, it's just not the best option," she said. "These kids at these magnet schools, they've made bonds."
"It could make me lose a lot of my friends at school and I may not have any friends, and that'd make me sad because I'm already a shy person," Tanesha's sophomore daughter, Kaelin, said. "Just for us to not be able to go there anymore, I feel like, it was a waste of our time. We've grown bonds, we've grown like families at Central [High School]."
In it's survey, JCPS calls option one the "most equitable option with the least negative impact on students of color," adding students of color are disproportionately impacted by the current driver shortage.
"Yeah, but option one, it mainly affects Black and brown and poor students and families," Booker said. "So they're the ones this is going to hit."
Both presidents of the Louisville NAACP and Louisville Urban League have said they are opposed to that option.
In a letter NAACP President Raoul Cunningham hand-delivered to JCPS at the Van Hoose Center on Wednesday, the organization said the first option would "...lead to further segregation of schools in West Louisville and deny opportunities for a high-quality education to Black, brown and poor students."
They also said if option one is selected, the NAACP would withdraw its support of the district's choice zone plan.
As of March 19, JCPS officials said it sits at 569 bus routes but with only 553 drivers – with 52 of them absent each day. JCPS Chief Operations Officer Dr. Rob Fulk projected they’ll be at 526 drivers next school year.
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