Commonwealth Policy Center

School is back in session but Jefferson County Public Schools aren’t prepared. 18,000 Jefferson County public school students lost access to busses this year. Now the school district is asking parents to drive them. They’re offering a stipend to help offset the cost: $5 each day for most families and $10 for those with low incomes. That plan will cost the district $9 million this year. The state’s largest school district dealt with a bussing fiasco last year, and the General Assembly recently established a task force to investigate breaking JCPS up into smaller, more manageable districts. This new transportation plan may make the busses run on time, but it places a major burden on the parents who didn’t plan for the failure of JCPS’s busses to run.