A breakdown in communication led to last year's school transportation debacle in Louisville.

That's according to an audit of Jefferson County Public Schools.

The findings were presented to a state task force today that's looking at ways to overhaul the district.

Our June Lefler has more.

And tonight's legislative update.

JCP has paid for its own transportation audit, which came out this spring.

And consultant says months of big changes and little communication resulted in some students getting home as late as 10 p.m. on the first day of school last year.

The Transportation Department was not at the table.

The IT department was not at the table.

School principals were not meaningful, engaged in the process.

The reasons given by staff for this exclusion varied, but the end result was that the initiatives were largely directed by a small number of JCP senior staff and a retired administrator brought back on a consulting basis.

JCP Educators who serve on a task force created by the state legislature say those problems are a thing of the past.

I'm assuming kind of based on the presentation that this was undertaken before we had our transportation of the school year start, because the school year start this year went extremely well.

You know, as Representative Genachowski indicated, this year has been profoundly different.

We don't have late busses.

Our busses are all there on time.

We don't have the issues with bus discipline.

So just in terms of commentary and firsthand experience, I can never defend what happened in 2023, but it is a profoundly different situation now.

But there has been a trade off since last year.

J.C. Pierce had to cut bussing for students who opt not to go to their home school students that apply and get into magnet schools with special programing have to get to school on their own now.

In another example, a district we're currently working with which is almost three times the size of JCPenney's, they provide a huge amount of transportation to advanced academic programs and CTE programs across schools.

And how do they handle it?

Part of it is done with the scheduling piece.

The students are transported to their regular home school and then they pick up another bus to go to their specialty program.

And then there's a mid-day run that brings them from their specialty program back to their home school.

All very complicate ways of saying that there are lots of ways to do it without denying services to students.

J.C. Administration has said it agrees with most of the audit and its recommendations for improvement.

For Kentucky Edition, I'm June Leffler.

Thank you, June.

Low income families of students who have been denied bus transportation will receive travel stipends from the district.