Will Jefferson County’s excessive busing crash due to driver shortages?
JeffCo Busing Plan Rolling Over Parents - Kid
The Jefferson County Public Schools’ busing madness may be running up against a new problem.
After years of kids being hauled all over the school district – sometimes miles from their homes – boredom and resulting misbehavior among the students were inevitable consequences. It’s no secret that student behavior problems and other issues have been growing for years.
Now, however, the problems of students acting out on the buses has gotten so bad that the school system is facing a new situation: record retirement and resignation of bus drivers.
WDRB reports that the Jefferson County Public Schools system is currently about 75 to 100 drivers short of what is needed to operate this massive system next fall. Is it possible that a bus driver shortage will finally force the school district to take a more rational approach to fixing its schools?
After all, as we pointed out in our “Blacks Still Falling Through Gaps, the 2012 Update” report, busing isn’t fixing achievement gap problems in Louisville. It’s just moving it around a bit.
Here are some key points from WDRB:
JCPS drives more than 70,000 kids to school every day (That’s about 70% of the entire enrollment)
Crashes are common
There are bus fights: sometimes so bad drivers are forced to pull over and wait for police
A video surfaced last month showing a school bus dragging a 7-year-old old girl down the street
Someone shot at a bus
YIKES!
It would be MUCH better if Jefferson County pushed for a real charter school law in Kentucky so they could reform some of their biggest problem schools into higher performing charters where local neighborhood kids would want to go to school. I am pretty sure most kids in Louisville look at long bus rides to schools far away from home as boring and sometimes frightening. Furthermore, despite something like four decades of trying, buses have not fixed Louisville’s extensive education problems.