LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Jefferson County Public Schools (JCPS) has been losing school bus drivers for several years. The district reported Tuesday that it currently has 574 school bus drivers; that is 26 fewer than it had in August, and 75 fewer than it had in 2022.
Many of them have said their reason for leaving is unruly students on the bus, making it unsafe for them to drive and contributing to burnout. They also said the district has not laid down the law hard enough with students.
"They don't feel like they get support from the school or the district when they write them up," John Stovall, president of Teamsters Local 783, said. "They feel like it's a waste of time."
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Stovall said for years he has told his drivers to only write up a referral if the action is serious: like physical violence or threats of physical violence.
The FOCUS team submitted an open records request to JCPS for the total number of bus referrals between Aug. 10 and Oct. 26, and also the total number of disciplines against students.
According to data provided by the district, 3,328 bus referrals were filled out in the first 44 days of school. That's an average of 75 per day.
Drivers have told FOCUS it was a complicated process to submit referrals prior to Oct. 15, first having to be signed off on by a compound coordinator, and then being turned in to a school administrator. JCPS told FOCUS the total of 3,328 was "similar to the number reviewed by compound coordinators."
In that same time period, there was also a total of 3,793 disciplines given to students. The disciplines ranged over many different categories.
The five highest were:
- 1,046 student conferences
- 733 full (two-way) bus suspensions
- 599 phone calls
- 450 parent/guardian conferences
- 313 one-way bus suspensions
To see the full list, click here.
"It doesn't say what the discipline was for," Stovall said. "It just says, you know, they had referrals, they had this it doesn't say what the behavior was that warranted the referrals to begin with."
Stovall didn't feel the data set proved a solid point, because it didn't include how serious the original offense was. He said overall, he doesn't think things like parent conferences and phone calls are very effective at deterring bad behavior.
"They had 1,000 summaries -- conference summaries -- which is basically, 'Randy, don't do that again, and you will get punished, or I'm gonna call your mom;' it doesn't say what kind of discipline they received," he said.
FOCUS was able to verify what punishment was handed down in some of the high profile school bus fights this year.
On Sept. 13, a female student was following a bus in a car and got on at the wrong stop. Once she got on the bus, she began fighting with another student and maced them. The initiating student got a 10-day out of school suspension.
On Sept. 20, three students going to Highland Middle School got in a large fight, and the driver was forced to pull over. One student was sent to the hospital. Two students were charged with 4th degree assault and all three students got a four-day one-way bus suspension.
"Not every kid has to be kicked off a school bus," Stovall said. "But there are some that probably need to be kicked off a school bus because they're impacting the safety of the other people and the driver on that bus. And not to mention the people on the street driving."
Stovall did have positive things to say about interim director of operations for JCPS Dr. Rob Fulk, who took over on Oct. 2. Fulk has met with bus drivers several times, and pledged to uphold the student code of conduct.
"He told them, he's going to enforce the student discipline code," Stovall said. "And my understanding is he has so far, but you know, that's a step in the right direction, but they gotta continue it."
Fulk spoke at Tuesday's board meeting about the driver retention initiatives they have been doing, including offering bonuses for taking a "challenging route", bonuses for working every day in a pay period, and more.
Fulk said they have had 12 retirements, 30 resignations and have hired 51 drivers this school year. The reason why the district is still down 26 drivers for the year is likely due to drivers moving to other positions within the district and not being counted in the same way.
JCPS declined to do an interview for this story.
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