Principal pleased with morning bus runs as JCPS returns to school

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WAVE) – After six unexpected days off, elementary and middle school students in the Jefferson County Public Schools have returned to the classroom.

At Goldsmith Elementary, the first bus arrived 20 minutes early. Goldsmith opens at 9:40 a.m. and several buses arrived at that time. The only significant delay was one bus, which showed up an hour late.

Arriving students were greeted with a dance party, which is a Friday tradition at Goldsmith.

Principal Jessica Carter said this was already better than last week. Carter wasn’t too concerned about the buses that arrived a few minutes behind schedule. She said that’s what they expect on the first few days of school.

Carter spent the last few days figuring out transportation needs for students and communicating that with the transportation department. This was also the first day school administrators used the new GPS tracking apps. It’s currently only available to school staff. JCPS hopes to make it available to parents soon.

Seeing parents dropping their kids off in the morning wasn’t something that alarmed Carter.

“The first few days they get tired of waiting on the buses, that’s nothing new. I think it will taper off as the routes level off,” Carter said. “We did not have a significant number of students switch to car riders. I know a lot of schools did. We didn’t have a significant number- around ten switched to car rider. We’ll see how it goes over the next few weeks.”

Families and administrators are still waiting to see if the transportation woes will be resolved when the entire district is back in class on Monday.

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