Some students at six magnet schools will have district transportation restored in March under a proposal the Jefferson County Board of Education greenlighted Tuesday night.
The school board voted unanimously to approve a proposal from Jefferson County Public Schools staff restoring district bus service to low-income students at Butler Traditional High School, duPont Manual High School and Louisville Male High School. The plan restores transportation to all students regardless of family income at Coleridge-Taylor Elementary, Whitney Young Elementary and Johnson Traditional Middle School.
Students at those schools have been without a school bus since the board voted in April 2024 to end most magnet transportation amid a driver shortage.
Tuesday’s vote came after a dozen people urged the board to restore bus service, noting that low-income students, and Black and Brown students are most disadvantaged by the cuts.
JCPS Superintendent Marty Pollio and top staff hoped to restore transportation to those schools last fall through an agreement to lease drivers from TARC, the city’s public transportation authority. Local leaders hailed the agreement as a successful collaboration between JCPS and Louisville Metro Government. However, the plan was slow to materialize. Pollio said that’s because TARC drivers struggled to pass the tests the state requires for their ‘S’ certification, which employees need to drive school buses.
Staff say there are now 69 TARC drivers with the proper certification — enough to start implementing route restorations.
Families at the selected schools will have several weeks more to wait for a bus. District officials need around six weeks to gather information from families, redesign routes, bid the routes out to drivers and allow time for drivers to practice. JCPS Chief Operations Officer Rob Fulk estimated routes would be restored on March 17 — less than three months before the end of the school year.
Fulk said restoring the magnet routes will create some temporary delays for non-magnet students on 90 runs — impacting approximately 20% of students who start at 8:40 a.m. and 9:40 a.m.
However, Fulk said, those delays should “iron out” as drivers and students adjust to their new schedules.
During Tuesday’s meeting, Pollio said students who transferred away from their magnet schools for the 2024-2025 school year due to transportation cuts would be allowed to transfer back to their magnet next fall if their route was restored.
Several families sued the district over the transportation cuts, however the judge allowed the cuts to remain in place, based in part on the JCPS’s promise they were working towards the TARC solution.
Now that transportation is in sight for some students, one mother who sued said it’s too late for her 10-year-old son, Noah Tabor.
“Even Noah put that together,” plaintiff Taryn Bell said. “He said, ‘So what, two months of a bus?’”
Bell transferred Noah from his magnet, Whitney Young Elementary, in October, after struggling to get him to school on the city’s beleaguered transit system for most of the fall. Bell’s transportation challenges led to a cascade of other problems, including the threat of jail time over her son’s absences.
Although Bell believes Meyzeek Middle School would be the best fit for Noah next year, she’s forgoing the application for Meyzeek’s math, science and technology magnet over fears that transportation won’t be provided. Meyzeek is not on the list of schools that would have routes restored.
“I don’t want to put myself in that headache again,” she said.
