LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The union president representing nearly all the JCPS bus drivers weighs in on the busing reboot.
The union president representing nearly all the Jefferson County Public Schools bus drivers says the district has improved from its opening day busing fiasco but more work is needed to shorten routes.
Comments from Teamsters Local 783 President John Stovall came after the district resumed classes for all students. On Aug. 9, JCPS encountered a disastrous start to the school year, experiencing a near total breakdown of a new bussing system which left students on the wrong bus, dropped off miles from where they should have and some returning home after dark.
This prompted the district to suspend classes for nearly a week as leadership scrambled to find solutions to a problem that exhausted young passengers and horrified parents who couldn’t locate their children even hours after they were expected home.
Nearly all the JCPS bus drivers are represented by Teamsters Local 783. Its Union President, John Stovall, has over 40 years’ of experience, either working for or with the district.
Stovall said he warned the district of an impending calamity instituting a new bussing system and says he advised the district to push back the start of the new school year.
“When you go from two start times to nine start times, I knew that was going to be a nightmare and then I had drivers calling me that normally don’t call me unless it’s something really important and a few of them were in tears,” he shared.
Stovall says the district was asking too much of its drivers with the new routes, leaving almost no grace period between stops to absorb delays from afternoon traffic or students placed incorrectly on buses by school staff.
“Afternoon, I’ve got drivers out on the east end. They are running all the way to Cane Run Road and Dixey Highway. That’s what’s killing them and there’s no way they can make those times,” Stovall told Spectrum News 1. “The public knows from 3 o’clock to 6 o’clock, the Gene Synder is a nightmare, 64 is a nightmare, 65 is a nightmare and then you compound that with a wreck or school getting out late,” Stovall added.
So the district regrouped, canceling classes for nearly a week. In fact high school students didn’t return to class until Monday. During that time, JCPS hired 20 additional school buses and drivers, added dozens of employees to their bus hotline and deployed a fleet of vans and other district vehicles to take kids home if needed.
JCPS even confirmed Superintendent Marty Pollio personally drove four students home in a district vehicle.
Drop-off times improved, with the district stating the final JCPS student was home by 7:48 on Monday. Stovall says it’s a step in the right direction, but the crux of the busing disaster was because of routes that are too long with too many stops and not enough time built in for issues out of his drivers’ control.
As long as routes extend across Louisville from the far east side to western points of the city, delays going forward are very possible. “They’ve got to get a handle on the afternoon stops. If they can shorten them up...to get back where you’re not driving 45 minutes to pick up two kids and then run them all the way back to where they live at,” Stovall said.
In the last two weeks, Stovall says he’s spent a great amount of his time defending his drivers. He says they care for the safety of the children they deliver to and from school, yet, at times, drivers have been experiencing blame for significant delays in returning children home after school.
“The biggest thing I’d like the parents to understand, and for the most part from what my drivers are saying, the parents have been very polite and everything ... just letting them know it’s not the drivers’ fault. They are simply doing their job the way it was described to them to do it,” Stovall said. “There’s not a bus driver out there that wants to see anything bad happen to any kid on there or anything else.”
A spokesperson for JCPS confirmed all students were dropped off by 7:13 p.m. Tuesday.