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The year’s first winter storm closed Jessamine County Public Schools last week and Monday, Jan. 13. Tuesday was the first day back for students throughout Jessamine County, with an alternative transportation plan put in place for only about 1 percent of students. Also, the superintendent responded to a Facebook video regarding transportation.

Monday, Jan. 6, was the only traditional snow day, with the rest of the time including some schoolwork through non-traditional instruction (NTI). 

The 3-6 inches of snow and accumulation of ice after the early January winter storm had left roads throughout the county dangerous, and although the main roads have already been cleaned up– county roads and areas with a lot of shade are staying icy. “Unfortunately, the sun is shining and bright right now, but not every road gets to see the sunshine, especially some of our deep rural roads that are covered by trees. the sun can’t get to them, so the salt doesn’t work as well. But we’re working everyday. Our road crews have been out today trying to attack the problem areas to ensure adequate safe travel for the buses so hopefully the sun is doing its job and shining on the streets,” Deputy Judge Executive Justin Ray said.

“We definitely used special equipment and kind of an all hands on deck approach to get things done. Basically, there’s certain roads in the county that are somewhat treacherous even in dry conditions. They’re narrow, winding, have slopes, narrow shoulders, and even under great weather conditions, they’re challenging roads to drive. Then you add snow, ice, even in certain cases where the roads get cleared, they don’t get cleared all the way– the snow and ice get pushed to the side and it creates a more narrow road.” said Board of Education Chair Steven Scrivner. 

The snow and ice also proved to be a challenge in cleaning up the districts’ school buses. 

Superintendent Sara Crum said that the District did rent lifts for crews to clean the two inches of snow and ice off of the top of the buses quicker, but that on Monday, Jan. 13, the school district still had 10-12 routes where buses couldn’t get to because of the road conditions. 

On Tuesday, Jan. 14, Jessamine County Schools welcomed students back to school with its alternate transportation plan. The one percent of students who had to use the alternate transportation plan had to walk to a slightly further spot that was accessible to the buses. There were only two roads, each with two students, where there were no safe pickup points. These students were excused. 

“We said that any students whose family members didn’t feel like it was safe for them to get to school whether that was for traveling roads or this cold weather, we just asked them to let us know but we approved those days,” said Crum. She added that for however long the bus can’t access icy roads, the district will work with families and students’ attendance will not suffer.

Ray said the county is staying in close communication with the school District to “stay on the same page,” and added that he’s sure closing the schools for the week and a day was a difficult decision. 

“More than anything I’m just incredibly proud that we didn’t just sit back and wait for another week of school to be missed and everything to thaw out. We came up with kind of a creative solution, we kept safety at the forefront in terms of making some modifications to the bus routes but our staff worked super hard on this to get this plan in place,” Scrivner said. 

If the week had passed by with 5 more days of NTI, then the district would have used 10 NTI days and it isn’t even halfway through January. With the risk of a poor attendance day on Tuesday, which takes away funding from the district for those students for the day, Scrivner said, “We did this because the majority of the kids in the county had the ability to get to schools safely and we wanted them to be in the buildings.”

Scrivner also expressed gratitude to the county road team for their work with the district to prepare roads. 

The District’s plan to get most students in class worked. “We had 93.3 percent attendance today. And that is higher than this day was last year without any bad weather. We were very pleased with that,” Crum said. 

Video 

Tuesday, a recorded Ring door bell video was published in a Nicholasville Facebook ground. It’s a school district maintenance man telling students that a van will be coming by to pick them up for school. 

Yesterday evening, the Nicholasville Police Department also confirmed on its Facebook page that the subject in the video is “employed by the Jessamine County School system, and the van would be marked with the appropriate seals, markings, and placards to identify it as an official vehicle.”

The Superintendent explained the situation to the Journal. 

The school district instructed all of its bus drivers that if they reached a point on their route that didn’t feel safe to navigate on, that they call in, and stop moving forward in the area. 

“So what’s happening in that video, we did have one bus that met some bad roads that we weren’t expecting. I’m assuming maybe it refroze overnight, and so that bus contacted the bus garage and we started making plans to send out district vehicles to pick up those few students,” Crum said. She added that a district maintenance person had come to assist the bus driver to make sure the bus was able to get out of the subdivision. The maintenance person saw students waiting outside and let them know a vehicle would be coming to pick them up. 

“Honestly, it was our best effort. We were trying our best to send vehicles out to get those kids and they were all marked district vehicles with staff members in them who had their badges. At the same time, we were making phone calls to those families to let them know the bus was not going to be able to make it, and that we’re sending a district van,” Crum said. 

Crum added that some people weren’t comfortable with this adjustment, and said that they’d bring their students themselves, which was of course allowed.