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Louisville resident here. This clusterfuck has lead to the first week of school effectively being canceled. 88 Bus drivers quit after that first day - they ha

Louisville resident here. This clusterfuck has lead to the first week of school effectively being canceled. 88 Bus drivers quit after that first day - they had been set up to fail. The facts I'm aware of at this point: - Louisville has historically zany bus routes, do to a segregated population that goes back to redlining and diversity metrics for schools. Kids regularly get bussed across town instead of down the street, sometimes having to quickly change a second bus at chaotic depots with little time. The system was not great before this colossal failure of judgement. - A bus driver 'shortage' (I'm somewhat understanding that a bureaucracy like a school district would have a hard time flexing their budget enough to fix the shortage, I assume changing allocation is laborious) ultimately caused by it not being a desirable-enough job. - 750 routes were reduced to 600. I'm not sure about the theoretical math of that with respect to area covered, but local group messaging indicated that prior to this year, bus drivers might have had to drop off at two schools in the morning, and pick up from one in the afternoon. Now, most drivers had to go to three(!), four(!!), or (due to the routing company not having two schools in their data at all) FIVE(!!!!) schools on a route. - Beyond the new routing, they also completely changed the school schedules to 'stagger' the starts for groups of kids and schools. Some kids were getting on the bus as early as 5am, and elementary school children were dismissed at like 2 in the afternoon; meanwhile some high school schedules ran past 5pm. - Kids were indeed kept on busses for hours, small ones soiling themselves, many hungry, some missing medication - etc. - Teachers had to report in Thursday and Friday despite the kids being on a 'snow-day' schedule. afaik they were called in to setup chromebooks. - Only ONE school-board member voted against this plan. One. The rest thought "yeah seems good".

pavel_lishin 3y ago
Waking a child up at 7am for school seems harsh enough; if someone told me my child had to be up at 5am, I'd tell them to pull my other leg.
- gs17 3y ago
  Not even just up at 5, they need to be ready and out the door.
joenot443 3y ago
Great comment, thanks for the writeup. What's the local response been like? I can only imagine the blood boiling from parents. 5am! What a disgrace, my heart goes out to those families.
- HeyLaughingBoy 3y ago
  Seriously. I'm here bitching about 6:30AM and a 45 minute ride to school!
- eutropia 3y ago
  Calls for the superintendent's head; a lot of angry parents with sad or scared kids; district says they "will be reviewing bus routes and bus stops for efficiency. Drivers will also be practicing their routes, and get paid for those extra days of work. " Yeah, no. When the generated routes sometimes included roads which don't exist in KY and drivers can't complete the routes on time WITHOUT kids on the bus, there's no way they're getting this fixed in 4 days. My kid isn't school aged yet and I know I will be voting out every single school board member during elections, with maybe the exception of the one who voted against. Of course, last election, people were campaigning against raising the portion of property tax dedicated towards the school district... you get what you pay for?
toast0 3y ago
> Beyond the new routing, they also completely changed the school schedules to 'stagger' the starts for groups of kids and schools. Some kids were getting on the bus as early as 5am, and elementary school children were dismissed at like 2 in the afternoon; meanwhile some high school schedules ran past 5pm. The details matter of course, but staggering start times is good for two things. a) seems like high school aged kids are more responsive to a later start time than younger kids, so better for the students maybe. b) staggered start time can reduce the number of busses and drivers needed if you don't want to mix kids of different age groups (which you probably don't!). However, it comes with a big downside, cascading failure. If bus X does routes A, B, and C in order, and gets behind schedule for route A, route B starts behind schedule, and likely route C as well; depending on how far behind and how much slack is in the schedule. For school bus routes, morning pickup can often recover, if the bus is late enough, some students will find an alternate route which means fewer pickups which speeds the route. For afternoon drop off, you're pretty stuck, drivers can't leave the school until loading finishes, even if it's delayed or just slow as students get used to the bus. Drivers can't skip drop offs when they're behind schedule. Reducing the number of routes is probably required to match up the number of drivers with the number of routes... but if each route hits more points, the routes become longer and the slack between runs gets shorter.
- eutropia 3y ago
  The start time changes can of course make sense (e.g. teenagers later in the day), but a big issue for smaller kids ending significantly earlier is childcare. Who's going to look after your second grader from 2pm-5pm+ when you get off of work? Keep in mind, the kids riding the bus are not the kids whose parents can drop them off and pick them up; and one of the education system's primary functions is childcare. But sure, in principle - if you are thoughtful, changes from the status quo can be better.
  - pavel_lishin 3y ago
    Hell, who's going to look at them at 5am if they're having to get up that early? You're asking probably working parents to sacrifice at least 2, if not more, hours of sleep. For parents who work overnights, they may not even be home yet. Staggered schedules might make sense, but not the way this was done.
scarface_74 3y ago
> Louisville has historically zany bus routes, do to a segregated population that goes back to redlining and diversity metrics for schools Just to provide a lot of context, I am Black, I grew up in south GA. My still living parents were one of the last to graduate under Jim Crow rules and my mom was one of the first Black math teachers in one of the formerly White schools in the city. She fought to teach advance math classes because the school system wanted to have her teach all of the lower level classes so not to offend the upper class White students. She spent most of her 30 years as the department head. She was also witness to the early integration initiatives where anyone could go to any school. While the intention may have been good on the national level, what ended up happening when they did the school redistricting for integration, the predominately Black schools stayed Black, they assigned the poor White neighborhoods to the Black schools. They assigned the middle and upper class Black neighborhoods to the former White schools. Meet the new boss… Now in metro Atlanta, the upper richer neighborhoods just incorporate into their own city so they can segregate themselves from the “inner city schools” and keep their tax money. No judgement: we had a house built in a former “sundown town” (the one that Oprah visited in the 80s”) because we knew that house prices would rise faster.
- selimthegrim 3y ago
  Have you felt safe in that town since? I understand it’s heavily suburbanized now
  - scarface_74 3y ago
    This is Cumming in Forsyth county https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumming,_Georgia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumming,_Georgia Since around 2013, builders have started moving in and building houses in Forsyth county overwhelming the inner, older core of Cumming. People started migrating from other parts of Atlanta and other states because of the cheap new houses. We had our 3100 five bed/3.5 bath built here for $335K in 2016. While we are very much a minority, the people who are moving in are somewhat more socially liberal. What I call “Romney Republicans”. They just care about low taxes, their guns and good schools. They could care less about the “war on woke” and are more worried about ChatGPT taking their jobs than “illegal immigrants”. As far as feeling safe, it’s a mixed bag. My very big intimidating looking stepson who is a big teddy bear grew up in the burbs all of his life. His friendship circle is what we call the Rainbow Coalition and we have never had a problem with the parents of his (White) girlfriends. But you can see the generational divide. We were at the movies and he saw a classmate - a White girl - he hadn’t seen awhile. He walked up to her and she jumped up and hugged him. Her mom hugged him. Her dad shook his hand. But her grand parents were obviously nervous at first. But shockingly not as nervous when their mutual friend who was White saw her first. He wanted to walk to the local Waffle House after a game at night with one of his Black friends. We said he could only go if their White friend was going to walk with him (all three are roommates now and are inseparable). We were more worried about the police stopping them than anything else. But as far as how my wife and I are treated. We are short and old and wear glasses. No one sees us a threat.
rolandog 3y ago
> - Kids were indeed kept on busses for hours, small ones soiling themselves, [...] By the power of capitalistic optimizations and cost-cutting, we as a society have brought the advances of delivery driver working conditions even to children. /s How did we ever get coaxed into optimizing for cost reduction instead of for increasing quality of service?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

pavel_lishin 3y ago

Waking a child up at 7am for school seems harsh enough; if someone told me my child had to be up at 5am, I'd tell them to pull my other leg.

gs17 3y ago
Not even just up at 5, they need to be ready and out the door.

joenot443 3y ago

Great comment, thanks for the writeup. What's the local response been like? I can only imagine the blood boiling from parents. 5am! What a disgrace, my heart goes out to those families.

HeyLaughingBoy 3y ago
Seriously. I'm here bitching about 6:30AM and a 45 minute ride to school!
eutropia 3y ago
Calls for the superintendent's head; a lot of angry parents with sad or scared kids; district says they "will be reviewing bus routes and bus stops for efficiency. Drivers will also be practicing their routes, and get paid for those extra days of work. " Yeah, no. When the generated routes sometimes included roads which don't exist in KY and drivers can't complete the routes on time WITHOUT kids on the bus, there's no way they're getting this fixed in 4 days. My kid isn't school aged yet and I know I will be voting out every single school board member during elections, with maybe the exception of the one who voted against. Of course, last election, people were campaigning against raising the portion of property tax dedicated towards the school district... you get what you pay for?

toast0 3y ago

> Beyond the new routing, they also completely changed the school schedules to 'stagger' the starts for groups of kids and schools. Some kids were getting on the bus as early as 5am, and elementary school children were dismissed at like 2 in the afternoon; meanwhile some high school schedules ran past 5pm. The details matter of course, but staggering start times is good for two things. a) seems like high school aged kids are more responsive to a later start time than younger kids, so better for the students maybe. b) staggered start time can reduce the number of busses and drivers needed if you don't want to mix kids of different age groups (which you probably don't!). However, it comes with a big downside, cascading failure. If bus X does routes A, B, and C in order, and gets behind schedule for route A, route B starts behind schedule, and likely route C as well; depending on how far behind and how much slack is in the schedule. For school bus routes, morning pickup can often recover, if the bus is late enough, some students will find an alternate route which means fewer pickups which speeds the route. For afternoon drop off, you're pretty stuck, drivers can't leave the school until loading finishes, even if it's delayed or just slow as students get used to the bus. Drivers can't skip drop offs when they're behind schedule. Reducing the number of routes is probably required to match up the number of drivers with the number of routes... but if each route hits more points, the routes become longer and the slack between runs gets shorter.

eutropia 3y ago
The start time changes can of course make sense (e.g. teenagers later in the day), but a big issue for smaller kids ending significantly earlier is childcare. Who's going to look after your second grader from 2pm-5pm+ when you get off of work? Keep in mind, the kids riding the bus are not the kids whose parents can drop them off and pick them up; and one of the education system's primary functions is childcare. But sure, in principle - if you are thoughtful, changes from the status quo can be better.
- pavel_lishin 3y ago
  Hell, who's going to look at them at 5am if they're having to get up that early? You're asking probably working parents to sacrifice at least 2, if not more, hours of sleep. For parents who work overnights, they may not even be home yet. Staggered schedules might make sense, but not the way this was done.

scarface_74 3y ago

> Louisville has historically zany bus routes, do to a segregated population that goes back to redlining and diversity metrics for schools Just to provide a lot of context, I am Black, I grew up in south GA. My still living parents were one of the last to graduate under Jim Crow rules and my mom was one of the first Black math teachers in one of the formerly White schools in the city. She fought to teach advance math classes because the school system wanted to have her teach all of the lower level classes so not to offend the upper class White students. She spent most of her 30 years as the department head. She was also witness to the early integration initiatives where anyone could go to any school. While the intention may have been good on the national level, what ended up happening when they did the school redistricting for integration, the predominately Black schools stayed Black, they assigned the poor White neighborhoods to the Black schools. They assigned the middle and upper class Black neighborhoods to the former White schools. Meet the new boss… Now in metro Atlanta, the upper richer neighborhoods just incorporate into their own city so they can segregate themselves from the “inner city schools” and keep their tax money. No judgement: we had a house built in a former “sundown town” (the one that Oprah visited in the 80s”) because we knew that house prices would rise faster.

selimthegrim 3y ago
Have you felt safe in that town since? I understand it’s heavily suburbanized now
- scarface_74 3y ago
  This is Cumming in Forsyth county https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumming,_Georgia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumming,_Georgia Since around 2013, builders have started moving in and building houses in Forsyth county overwhelming the inner, older core of Cumming. People started migrating from other parts of Atlanta and other states because of the cheap new houses. We had our 3100 five bed/3.5 bath built here for $335K in 2016. While we are very much a minority, the people who are moving in are somewhat more socially liberal. What I call “Romney Republicans”. They just care about low taxes, their guns and good schools. They could care less about the “war on woke” and are more worried about ChatGPT taking their jobs than “illegal immigrants”. As far as feeling safe, it’s a mixed bag. My very big intimidating looking stepson who is a big teddy bear grew up in the burbs all of his life. His friendship circle is what we call the Rainbow Coalition and we have never had a problem with the parents of his (White) girlfriends. But you can see the generational divide. We were at the movies and he saw a classmate - a White girl - he hadn’t seen awhile. He walked up to her and she jumped up and hugged him. Her mom hugged him. Her dad shook his hand. But her grand parents were obviously nervous at first. But shockingly not as nervous when their mutual friend who was White saw her first. He wanted to walk to the local Waffle House after a game at night with one of his Black friends. We said he could only go if their White friend was going to walk with him (all three are roommates now and are inseparable). We were more worried about the police stopping them than anything else. But as far as how my wife and I are treated. We are short and old and wear glasses. No one sees us a threat.

rolandog 3y ago

> - Kids were indeed kept on busses for hours, small ones soiling themselves, [...] By the power of capitalistic optimizations and cost-cutting, we as a society have brought the advances of delivery driver working conditions even to children. /s How did we ever get coaxed into optimizing for cost reduction instead of for increasing quality of service?

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]