LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Jefferson County Public Schools announced Saturday, Aug. 12 that students would not return to class Monday, Aug. 14 or Tuesday, Aug. 15. However, JCPS staff will work Tuesday. The district is working to address the problems that caused students to arrive home hours late on the first day of school.

A JCPS spokesperson told Spectrum News 1, "To add clarity, we hope to have students back in school sometime next week and will communicate additional information on that to families and staff by Monday evening."

What You Need To Know

  • JCPS Superintendent Marty Pollio said parents should know when students will return to school by Saturday at the latest

  • Transportation issues delayed students for hours on the first day of school

  • JCPS canceled classes to address the issues 

  • Pollio said students may not return until the middle of next week

On Friday, Superintendent Dr. Marty Pollio said the district should have done a better job anticipating some of the transportation problems that led to classes being canceled after just one day.

“That’s on me,” he said, at a news conference Friday, Aug. 11.

Bus drivers spent Friday practicing their routes, while Pollio said the district was looking at short and long-term solutions.

“We believe that we are going to have some solutions in place,” he said. “We do know that families want to know about next week. I believe, looking at it, and the things that we need to implement with our bus drivers, it could be the middle of next week.”

They need to change the routing system, implementation and communication with parents, Pollio said.

“We are looking at ways in which, if a child is on a bus and the parent is not there, instead of the bus driver returning to a school, we would issue someone in a board vehicle to go assist that bus so the bus could then go on their way,” said Pollio. “We are working on ways at our depots, once again, that if one bus is late, we let everyone go on so it doesn’t hold up the whole system and therefore we can make sure that the bus is, and then have an alternative for that bus when they come into the depot.”

JCPS is operating with about 400 fewer routes than ten years ago, according to Pollio.

“Right now, we’re down to the about 575, there in that range, a little over 550,” he said. “The point being there is how many routes we have dropped as a result of transportation shortages with bus drivers. And that has really stretched us very thin. Obviously, we couldn’t, as I’ve said before, we couldn’t continue to do what we were doing before. And so making this massive change was an attempt to make sure we could get every kid to school at the right time.”

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