LOUISVILLE, Ky. — If Jefferson County Public Schools (JCPS) administrators select option one of the districts four transportation plans next year, the Louisville NAACP said it is ready to withdraw its support of the district's choice zone plan.
The first option would only provide bus services to students attending their resides schools, cutting transportation for more than 13,000 magnet and traditional school students, including at Manual and Male, who travel out of their resides zones.
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.
In its letter to JCPS, the NAACP stated 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."
Louisville Urban League President and CEO Lyndon Pryor said Wednesday he also opposes option one.
"Taking away buses from magnet schools is going to create incredible disparities within JCPS," he said. "For the students who are most impacted by poverty, historical discrimination and disinvestment."
A JCPS spokesperson provided WHAS11 News with the following statement, responding to the NAACP's letter and resolution:
"We always appreciate our friends at the NAACP advocating for our JCPS students. They are right, any change to our transportation system next school year will impact Black students and students of color. Black and other students of color are a majority of JCPS bus riders. They are disproportionately being impacted, right now, by the shortage of drivers and the resulting late arriving buses.
Those students of color - thousands of them - are currently missing thousands of instructional minutes at the start of every school day. We simply don’t have enough bus drivers to get every child who wants transportation to school on time. That’s got to end next school year. And while there are no great choices, doing nothing is not an option."
Several JCPS parents, who would be directly impacted by option one, spoke during the news conference.
"To me, [option one] is not the right solution," Tanesha Booker, a PTA parent at Central High School, said. "[Students would be] riding TARC--that's to school and from school. That's in the dark. That's in the rain. There's no sidewalks. That's when they're walking by themselves in unsafe neighborhoods."
Parents from Central High School's PTA said option one could leave more than 1,000 students without transportation at the start of next school year.
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. Fulk projects they’ll be at 526 drivers next school year.
The district’s goal is 474 routes or fewer, and option one would get them there, but JCPS Chief Operations Officer Dr. Rob Fulk admitted Tuesday there’s no guarantee how long that’d be effective if drivers keep leaving at a higher rate than they’re being hired.
The JCPS Board of Education will vote on the 2024-25 transportation plan on Tuesday, March 26.
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