LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Since the first day of school's transportation disaster, Jefferson County Public Schools has been working to address efficiency in the busing system in an effort to get students to and from school on time.
At a news conference Tuesday, Superintendent Marty Pollio provided updates on the district's plans and said he was "pleased" with the progress so far.
According to the district, the last student was dropped off at 7:13 p.m. Tuesday night.
Pollio started the conference by thanking JCPS staff, especially bus drivers, for their cooperation and persistence.
"First of all, I have to say our bus drivers are heroes. Thank you for sticking with this," he said. "We're working hard to support them and I can't thank you enough for what you've done."
Pollio said the times students have been getting home are closer to what they were at this time last year; however, the goal is to get all students home before 7 p.m. Pollio added the district wants arrival times to and from school to be predictable for families.
Over the last two weeks, JCPS has been working on short term solutions to address bus delays seen on the first day of school, when some students didn't arrive home until nearly 10 p.m.
Chief Operations Officer Chris Perkins said one of the most impactful things they can do is to shorten long routes.
In the next two days, the district will begin eliminating unused bus stops, where drivers have been stopping, but finding no students.
WHAS11 News asked Pollio if the district will call parents about the removal of stops, in case they had been driving students to and from school because of the bus problems.
"We'll communicate, I can't say exactly how we're going to do, that but we'll communicate with families," Pollio said.
Tuesday, the district also rolled out a new bus tracking app to provide live updates about where buses are located and when they will arrive.
As of Wednesday morning, the app had about 10,000 users and Chief Information Officer Kermit Belcher said it's been working well.
Belcher did note the manual addition of changes into the app, like buses out for maintenance or if a driver is out sick, will be an adjustment for transportation teams.
"That's a challenge, a logistical challenge, one of the largest that the transportation team has because as you can imagine with 600 buses there are changes daily, sometimes 10% of those," he said.
Pollio said in addition to gradual efficiency improvements, the district is still considering a complete overhaul of routes.
“We’re committed to doing that if that’s what we need," Pollio said. "But if we can improve the efficiencies in the current system to the point where we feel comfortable, then we wouldn’t do a complete overhaul.”
JCPS transports the majority of its more than 90,000 students, something Pollio said isn't the norm among large school districts. He pointed to Chicago, saying the district is 1,300 drivers short.
"When you are transporting 67,000 students, and many students are going through a depot from one part of the town to the other to reach their school, there are going to be some insufficiencies in that model, but that's a families choice to say 'I want to go to a school outside of my community' and 'I want transportation' and we're providing that," Pollio said.
“These challenges will continue to the point where we’re going to have to evaluate will we continue to provide these services to all every single family who chooses," Pollio added.
He said the district will decide in the next few weeks whether a complete overhaul of bus routes is warranted, or if it would be better to keep improving efficiencies.
"We have improved our efficiency greater than I anticipated from where we were two weeks ago today," Pollio said.
School officials announced during the week off, to attempt and fix issues, some JCPS staff members would be driving vans to cover mistakes during routes.
On Monday, a parent reached out to tell WHAS11 News that they saw Pollio driving one of those vans. On Tuesday, JCPS staff confirmed the woman's claim.
"My intention was to not have that out at all. I don't know how that happened. My intention was just to pitch in." Pollio said about him taking students home. "It's nothing that anyone else hasn't done.
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