Louisville mother sued JCPS for cutting her son’s bus. Now she can risk prison for not getting him to school.

Fallen leaves crushed under 10-year-old Noah Tabor’s tennis shoes as he walked to school one November morning. His 6-year-old sister Bella’s curly brown hair blew wildly in a breeze. Their mother, Taryn Bell, and father, Sincerity Tabor, went with them. From the outside, it was a kind of quaint, Norman Rockwell version of the American school commute.

Except that wasn’t what this family wanted at all.

The family is dealing with several institutional pressures: a shortage of bus drivers and Jefferson County Public Schools’ decision to cut transport in response; the district’s late-game facilities switch to address overcrowding; cuts to city transit, and the Jefferson County Attorney’s promise to prosecute parents under the state’s new truancy law.

The weight of it all meant Noah had to leave the school he’s attended since kindergarten: Whitney M. Young Elementary. Young is a magnet school in Louisville’s West End with small class sizes, a French-language program and teachers who were deeply invested in seeing Noah, a Pokemon-loving fifth-grader with a behavioral disability, succeed.

Bell worked hard to keep Noah on Young. She filed a federal lawsuit. She gave up job opportunities and much-needed income to spend hours a day on city transportation to get Noah to and from school. Ultimately, the state’s new truancy law and the threat of prison forced her hand, and Bell transferred Noah to Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School, half a mile from his home in the Shawnee neighborhood.

“I wanted to give him every opportunity and opportunity he can get, and we had all that — until recently,” Bell said.

Now, Bell doubts Noah will ever return to Young, and starved of students like Noah, many worry the west Louisville magnet might not be around much longer.

How Noah Lost His Bus

IN a split vote last springthe Jefferson County Board of Education voted to end transportation for about 15,000 magnet students. Noah was one of them.

Ahead of the vote, Bell and other parents joined the Louisville Branch of the NAACP and the Louisville Urban League in warning that restricted transportation would hurt low-income families and families of color the most.

“It’s affecting these kids because my son is now worried that he won’t be able to go to school with his friends,” Bell told a group of reporters gathered at NAACP headquarters in March.

Bell’s family doesn’t have a car, and she knew it would be difficult, if not impossible, to get Noah to school.

Then, near the end of the school year, JCPS threw another wrench into Bell’s plans: District leaders announced that Young would be moving to another location two miles further from Bell’s home. Moving the school would make room for students from Hudson Middle School, a new, overcrowded school in the West End.

Young’s enrollment had been declining for years. But last year, the district stopped admitting new students and eliminated Young’s kindergarten. Now the school makes do with just 100 children — the lowest enrollment of any JCPS elementary school. The The NAACP warned that schools like Young — magnets that serve high shares of low-income kids — would be hardest hit by transportation cuts and might have to close.

In July, Bell filed the federal lawsuit against JCPS. She and her co-plaintiffs argue that the transportation cuts discriminate against low-income students and students of color because they limit access to desirable educational programs whose families cannot afford private transportation. Their attorney asked a judge in August to block implementation of the district’s transportation cuts.

Instead, the judge allowed the cuts to go forward. The case is still pending.

Bell crossed his fingers and hoped that the borough’s promises to bring back transportation to Young through an agreement to loan TARC drivers would pan out.

It doesn’t have that.

TARC problems

From August to October, Bell tried to make it work. With no school bus or vehicle, the Bell family relied on TARC, the the city’s beleaguered transit systemto get Noah to school. Getting to the bus was a struggle.

Noah’s behavioral disorder causes him trouble sleeping. Getting him up around 7 a.m. — in time for an hour-long trip across town — was difficult and exacerbated his mood swings. Bell said the fifth grader would stomp through the house and refuse to leave.

“I felt tired and cranky and stuff because I’m not a morning person,” Noah explained. “I’m like a guy in the afternoon and at the end of the day.”

Their TARC journey itself was challenging and unpredictable, often making Noah late for school. The trip would begin with a five-minute walk south to Broadway to catch the 23 bus. The 23 was usually late, which meant that sometimes catching the transfer on Dixie Highway didn’t happen. If they made it to the transfer, the 18 bus would take them south a dozen blocks through the California neighborhood to the school. But recently reductions to the city’s underfunded transit system meant that the connection came less often.

Bell was unwilling to send her 10-year-old alone to TARC, and accompanying him meant she was unable to apply for much-needed employment. She spent three to four hours each day commuting.

“We get home and it was maybe like two hours later I had to get back on the bus to pick him up. So it really didn’t give me much room to be able to get a job,” Bell said.

Meanwhile, the family was in desperate need of income with the threat of foreclosure. Bell has not worked outside the home since having her oldest child 14 years ago. Her husband, Tabor, a chef by trade, has been unable to work for more than a year. Tabor is dealing with nerve damage due to complications from shingles. A condition called postherpetic neuralgia constantly sending unbidden pain signals to his face, head and neck.

Tabor spends much of his time in bed or at TARC, getting to and from doctor’s appointments and gathering the documentation to argue for disability benefits. He was often unavailable to pick up Noah in the afternoons while Bell went to pick up Bella, who was enrolled at King after JCPS cut Young’s kindergarten class.

A few times, when Bell had money, she sent Tabor in a Lyft after Noah. Once the school principal drove Noah home. But sometimes Bell decided to avoid the trouble and not send him at all.

Tabor applied for disability insurance with the Social Security Administration in April, but learned in December that his application was denied. Like the rest of the nationKentucky’s Disability Insurance Approval Rate Is Low – less than 34% according to numbers from the US Social Security Administration

Tabor plans to appeal. Bell and Tabor filed for bankruptcy in September to prevent the bank from foreclosing on their home. But they are behind again, this time on both the mortgage and the $187 monthly bankruptcy fee they owe.

Bell and Tabor do their best to insulate their children from financial stress. On Bella’s 6th birthday, Bell used food stamps to buy cupcakes for the girl’s kindergarten class. While Bella slept, she hung decorations in her room – a recycled banner from Noah’s 9th birthday and a gold balloon that Bell cleverly turned upside down to make a six and topped off with a pink bow.

‘So many little things’

As Noah’s tardiness and absences mounted, Bell knew what was coming. She is a parent advocate on several state and national advisory councils, including the State Interagency Council, Community Collaboration for Children, and Foster America.

She was well aware of a new state law that requires school districts to refer students and their families to their county attorney’s office for possible prosecution after 15 unexcused absences.

Jefferson County Attorney Mike O’Connell warned in October that he would charge parents of habitually truant elementary school students with unlawful transaction with a minor in the third degree — a misdemeanor that carries up to a year in prison.

Prosecutors would only proceed “under extreme circumstances … in cases where guardians are untouched by support efforts,” O’Connell said.

Asked if his office would consider transportation challenges from magnet families who lost their bus, O’Connell said he would weigh those issues.

“But there are ways to solve it,” he said. “If someone doesn’t contact JCPS or doesn’t contact all these different assistants and programs, then there’s no excuse. There’s no excuse. So if someone wants to do that and test me, I wouldn’t advise it.”

As of December, the Jefferson County Attorney’s office had not yet charged any parents under the new law, but an office spokesman said letters have been sent to 52 parents warning them of possible prosecution.

By the end of October, Noah had accumulated more than 30 unexcused absences. Bell said she called every day he was out or late to explain the problem, but records show his absences and tardiness were marked as unexcused. The most help the school could offer, Bell said, was free TARC passes.

Receiving a criminal charge for truancy carries additional risks for Bell. She was convicted of a low-level misdemeanor last year, and a new charge could send her straight to jail for 90 days. Bell said she is innocent of the charges in last year’s case, but took a plea deal after her attorney warned her that fighting the charge could take years.

Bell has yet to receive a letter from the Jefferson County Attorney’s Office about Noah’s absence, but the threat of incarceration was too scary, as was the prospect of involvement with Child Protective Services.

Bell panicked, and after months of fighting, she transferred Noah to King.

Bell said she is angry that so many systems came together to force her hand: an understaffed school district, an underfunded city transit system, a criminal justice system and a recalcitrant Social Security Administration.

“That’s exactly why I do the advocacy work that I do,” she said. “It’s so many little things that could be fixed to help families in the long run.”

So far, Bell said she and Tabor have been pleasantly surprised by King. Bell said the school has a negative reputation, but she has found the staff to be professional, caring and attentive. At first, the new classmates bullied Noah and pulled his hair. Administrators asked if they could move him to the other fifth grade, where he might fit in better socially, and it worked. Bell said he seems much happier.

Still, it’s not Young. Noah misses his friends, his French classes, and the teachers and staff at Young who understood him and all his quirks.