JCPS to give update on transportation system Tuesday night

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WAVE) - On Tuesday night, JCPS superintendent Dr. Marty Pollio will be giving an update on the district’s transportation plan.

Widespread transportation failures disrupted the beginning of the school year. Since then, students, families and staff members have been looking for improvements.

The meeting’s agenda says they’ll be talking about the current progress, strategic adjustments, preparations for early childhood, and considerations for future planning.

School started for JCPS on Aug. 9, and almost immediately things got off to a bad start.

Kids got picked up hours late and dropped off at 9:58 p.m.

“It’s just a ridiculous mess,” JCPS parent Jessica Rainer said on the first day of school. “They should’ve left it alone.”

School was canceled for a week and a half as JCPS worked to fix things the best they could. For weeks, we heard horror stories from parents.

“The busing isn’t working. It hasn’t worked since 2017,” Maureen Warden said at a school board meeting. “It didn’t work this week, this past week, It was an epic failure. My son, he has a cellphone. Thank god I was able to communicate with him. He was at the compound, I knew he was safe. But when he got home he said that there was no food they didn’t offer him water, and he was very very upset.”

At the first school board meeting after the transportation disaster, the board gave their thoughts on the situation.

“The report that you gave I guess just preliminarily is damning on many levels,” board member Corrie Shull said. “It sounds as though people just didn’t do their jobs. That’s unacceptable.”

“We have been trying to ask questions and get answers, and can’t get any responses that are worth anything from anyone,” said parent Alex Pritchett.

On Tuesday, parents might get some answers.

“Our plan is to bring you an update at our next board meeting in September about our transportation system,” Pollio said. “Some of the things we learn between now and then, some of things we changed, bring you some data around some of the facts of our transportation system right now.”

Pollio said that at the board meeting on Aug. 29. He also talked about finding a company for an external audit to figure out what caused the transportation issues.

“So that they could provide us a complete picture of what happened, what didn’t happen, what we should’ve done, and what we need to do moving forward,” Pollio said.

Pollio said they would have a company to do the audit by Tuesday night’s meeting.

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