LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Brittany Becerra is one of the thousands of Jefferson County Public School parents going through the ringer this week -- upset and stressed with how the district has implemented its new bus routes.
"We were out there for 30 minutes, and no one ever showed up," Brittany said of her 6-year-old son's bus stop on Wednesday morning.
Brittany walked .2 miles with her son Lucas while she was nine months pregnant, just for nothing to happen when they got there.
WHAS11 News talked to Brittany on the phone Friday, because she was in the hospital after getting a successful C-section surgery. They welcomed their newest son Christian to the world the night prior.
"What's going to be hard is getting to the bus stop...I've just had major abdominal surgery," she said.
Brittany knows she's in a very specific situation right now, but she believes she has valid reasons for asking for her son's bus stop to be moved.
According to Brittany, Lucas was the only child at his bus stop on Wednesday (when no bus showed up) and his stop last year (just .2 miles up the road) is right in front of her house. That way she can watch him from inside.
Even though her son's bus still goes right past the old stop, JCPS told her that her bus stop request form had been denied.
"I got a call from the principal [Friday morning] who said the board who approves moving the stops declined it. And I explained to her he's the only kid and they drive right past his old stop. And she said they declined it, but she would let them know that I disagreed with the decision," Brittany said.
JCPS responded to WHAS11 News about her situation, and said that priority is being given to students who have no bus stop at all.
"The committee (who decides on bus stop request forms) is made up of employees in the transportation department who, as we have said from the beginning, will be reviewing requests for bus stop location changes with a priority on those students who do not have an assigned stop or there is an obvious safety concern such as requiring a student to cross a four-lane highway. We are responding to the requests," JCPS spokesperson Mark Hebert said.
Brittany is still skeptical that Lucas does have a bus stop, though, because it didn't show up within the first 30 minutes Wednesday morning.
"Would you be comfortable putting him on the bus next week?" WHAS11 News asked. "If it shows up," she said.
Brittany also said she has considered some measures that go against her parenting philosophy, such as buying her son a cell phone so she could track him on the bus.
"He's six. Do I really need to buy him a phone to track him?" she said.
WHAS11 News also asked some parents to respond to things JCPS Superintendent Marty Pollio said in his first news conference since the bus fiasco started.
Dr. Pollio said the majority of the blame for the bus issues should not rest on AlphaRoute, the company from the Boston, MA area that designed the routes. He said more so, the blame should be on the school district for how the changes were implemented.
"I put it more on implementation, I mean, I think there are some challenges with the routes. There's no doubt about it. I'm not gonna put it on the company that they -- they're working with us now, they'll be in town tomorrow," Pollio said.
"It's probably a mix of both. I mean AI is great but when humans are involved, small children, lives are involved -- there has to be a quality check there. And that's where I feel maybe JCPS dropped the ball. They should have been out a couple weeks before school started running those routes," Pam Lott said, who is the legal guardian to a 11th grader at Seneca High School.
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