JCPS bus driver says she feels better about new routes after having more time to practice
After a disastrous first day of school last week, one Jefferson County Public Schools bus driver worked through the weekend to get her route down.
"I definitely am feeling a whole lot better about things," said Breonna Curtis.
Curtis has been a JCPS bus driver for six years and has never experienced a first day like the one we saw last week.
"I know that a lot of us were still scared about getting lost, but with these extra days that JCPS has given us to run the routes, we're having a little more time to familiarize ourselves, and it's feeling a little better, at least for me and a couple other drivers I've talked to," said Curtis.
She says the new bus routes are longer, with more stops, and have less room for error. She believes the routes were flawed; for example, some included turns onto streets that could not be made in real life.
Curtis said the routes constantly changed on bus drivers, right up until the last minute, as parents requested different stops. And they provide no downtime for the bus drivers.
"They didn't factor in human error. They didn't factor in weather patterns. They didn't factor in traffic patterns," Curtis said. "It was from A to Z at a hundred miles per hour with hardly any stops between, so if you're late on your first stop or second stop, it just compounds from then on."
John Stovall, the head of the bus driver union, says recent steps will help.
He says vans will now pick up kids who get on the wrong bus, so drivers don't have to circle back. And the district has pledged to do better with kids' bus labels to ensure they are where they're supposed to be in the first place.
"I think when they go back, there's still going to be hiccups, but it cannot be the way it was last time," Stovall said.
Curtis, a parent herself, says the bus drivers take their jobs seriously and are eager to make the new routes work, no matter how imperfect they may be.
"You do get those random comments, just like, you could have done things better, why don't you drive the bus the way you should? You should learn how to drive your route," she said. "And that's just, it's a little bit disheartening. But the support much outweighs the bad."