LOUISVILLE, Ky. — For the last week, John Stovall and bus drivers within Teamsters Local 783 have been trying to get their new bus routes down to a "T".
"Computers are great on certain things, but until you actually go out and drive the routes, you're not gonna know how it's actually going to work," Union President Stovall said.
Stovall says he represents "almost 700" bus drivers within Jefferson County Public Schools.
On July 24, Superintendent Dr. Marty Pollio debuted a new plan where the district has more drivers than routes to essentially end the bus driver shortage. There are now roughly 600 routes, designed to be longer and cover more of the county.
Stovall says every year, the Teamsters do a draft based on seniority to decide who gets which routes. The least senior members then became the "standby" drivers to start the year.
Stovall says the drivers have noticed the longer routes by the pages in their packets that outline the routes.
"I've heard it's gone from 5-6 pages to 10-12 pages now," Stovall said.
Stovall says this draft to pick the routes didn't occur until the week of July 31 (the week before school). He says because of that, most of them got only one week heads up on their routes.
"They had to make a change, we all know that. But I think if they would have brought the drivers in 2, 3, 4 weeks earlier, and let them run -- a lot of this fearfulness, apprehension, all that, could have been alleviated," he said.
Stovall says the drivers have voiced many concerns, from the routes covering too great of a distance, the lefts and rights of the routes not being fully thought out, and the fact that drivers will now have different routes in the morning vs. the afternoon.
"It's a concern for me, and it's a concern for the bus drivers. Because they're not sure what they're dealing with between morning and afternoon. They've been instructed if there is an issue on that bus --or a safety issue-- to file a complaint or a referral with the school, and the school is supposed to follow up with the bus drivers. Now, the school's not always good about doing that," Stovall said.
The routes were designed by "AlphaRoute", a company from the Boston area that JCPS hired in November to optimize it's bell schedule and bus routes. WHAS11 obtained the original data privacy contract, as well as an amendment from March, which said JCPS was Paying AlphaRoute $265,000 for the work. WHAS11 is following up with the district to make sure that is the full amount.
Stovall says the district never reached out to him for advice on the routes, and he thinks that would have avoided many of the headaches people are predicting for the first day of school.
"You can sit in a building at VanHoose (VanHoose Education Center) or C.B. Young (where the transportation call center is) and you're an administrator and kind of get in your safe confines. But what happens is, you got parents who've been calling in complaining about the routes [and] the bus drivers get the wrath of the parents," Stovall said.
The JCPS Communications team sent the following statement to WHAS11 Tuesday:
"Our bus drivers are doing a tremendous job getting ready for the new school year. Drivers have been practicing their new routes and are going above and beyond to ensure they are prepared for their students. We know all change comes with difficulty at first, and we expect to have to make some adjustments to transportation throughout the first few weeks of the school year," JCPS Chief Communications Officer Carolyn Callahan said.
Anyone who either doesn't have a school bus stop assigned for their child, thinks the stop is too far away or will not work for them is encouraged to call 502-485-RIDE (7433)
You can also fill out a bus stop request form. As of July 31, the district said it has received over 4,800 bus stop request forms.