Students Call Out Louisville School Bus Cuts In Rap Song ‘Where My Bus At’ Amid National Driver Shortage

A group of students who call themselves The Real Young Prodigys have released a song to protest recent bus cuts in Louisville ’s Jefferson County Public Schools. “Where My Bus At” was released on Aug. 7 with an accompanying music video that has garnered over 38,000 views on YouTube so far.

“I wish that it was back like it was before / I miss it when the bus came straight to my door,” they rap, according to the website We Are Teachers .

Their rap continues, “I’m a good kid/ I stay in class, too/ Teachers want to me to succeed, but I can’t get to school/ It’s all on the news / But I don’t want to fuss / Don’t got no one to drive / Hold up, let me whip the bus.”

The Real Prodigys were founded as part of the nonprofit Hiphop N2 Learning . According to the Courier Journal , the program was started by NyRee Clayton-Taylor, who serves JCPS’s academic instructional coach, and her husband Antonio Taylor, to help students with self-expression, according to the Courier Journal .

“Music is their language,” Taylor told We Are Teachers, explaining that the video was the students’ idea. “This is how they tell their stories, and we couldn’t be prouder of them for expressing themselves in such a powerful way about real issues that affect their lives.”

“Where My Bus At” highlights the budget cuts made to school bus routes. In April 2024, the county board of education voted to remove most school bus routes, with only Western High School and Central High School in JCPS being served.

“I don’t want the kids at any of our schools to suffer but we are making them suffer today if we don’t do something about it and it would be wholly negligent when our transportation department is telling us they need a decision to get this right next year,” James Craig from Jefferson County Board of Education said, according to Spectrum News 1 .

Members of the community criticized the decision at the time.

“Along the lines of economics decided, who has privilege and who does not, and that is a clear message to our students and to our kids,” Louisville Urban League CEO Lyndon Pryor told Spectrum News 1. “Kids are going to be robbed of choice, which is the district reneging on the promise that they made two years ago under the student assignment plan.”

JCPS pointed to the current national shortage of bus drivers as one of the reasons for the cuts. The issue has been ongoing across multiple states since 2021. Many school drivers retired during the COVID-19 pandemic, were laid off or never returned, according to Essence Girls United .

Around 20 million students aged 5 to 14 rely on buses to go to school in 2016, with 60% of low-income students relying on this mode of transportation to attend classes and extracurricular activities, according to the Bureau of Transportation .