LOUISVILLE, Ky. — After a tumultuous first day of school, Jefferson County Public Schools and the consulting company it used to optimize school bus routes have been under scrutiny.
AlphaRoute, which markets its technology as developed from MIT research, promises the use of the most "advanced routing algorithms" and award-winning technology to create efficient and cost-saving bus routes.
Despite reports that artificial intelligence was used in creating bus routes for JCPS, AlphaRoute said late Tuesday night that it didn't use AI when working with the school district.
"Some have asked whether artificial intelligence is to blame for the issues JCPS encountered, and we can emphatically say that is not the case," a statement from AlphaRoute said. "Artificial intelligence is not, and it has not once been a part of our work with JCPS."
AlphaRoute said its team does not use AI when constructing any bus routes, and that other factors are to blame for the major bus delays on JCPS's first day of school.
The company said that after it created a bus routing system for JCPS, the school district added approximately 5,000 bus stops to the system.
Not only were there now 5,000 additional stops in the system, but according to AlphaRoute, the bus stop times were not adjusted to account for this influx of stops.
"The fact that 5,000 stops were added was clearly detrimental, but what made this more problematic is that many of the stop times in the system were not properly adjusted to account for these new stops," AlphaRoute's statement said. "This is one of several factors we identified for the district this week when looking at the underlying JCPS data."
Another major reason AlphaRoute says JCPS's first day of school went poorly, is echoed by JCPS Superintendent Dr. Marty Pollio: the bus driver shortage.
According to Pollio, the district just a few years ago had enough drivers to perform 950 routes. Currently, JCPS has fewer than 600 drivers.
Due to the complexity of the bus route issues, JCPS cancelled school for students for several days.
Elementary school and middle school students are set to return on Friday, Aug. 18, while high schoolers can expect to go back to school on Monday, Aug. 21.
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