LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WAVE) – Two new faces will join the Jefferson County Board of Education after winning their seats in the general election.

Taylor Everett ran unopposed and will represent District 7 on the council. His wife was a teacher and aide at JCPS for 10 years and his daughter is a student at Ballard High School. He is currently the director of government services for consultancy Eight Eleven Group.

Trevin Bass defeated incumbent Barbara Lewis for the District 4 seat. Bass is the grant contracts coordinator for the Louisville Metro Office of Safe and Healthy Neighborhoods. He is also a JCPS parent with two sons currently attending the district.

With a background in recruitment, Everett believes his experience can help the council solve the transport problems caused by the ongoing shortage of bus drivers.

“With my experience, I think we need to put more resources into it,” Everett said. “We have to use outside firms and probably hire more recruiters to find these people because the wages and benefits are there, it’s just a matter of being able to get enough people to fill the positions.”

Bass tells WAVE he believes the district should have more driver assistance systems. Last school year, absence caused mass notices from bus drivers on difficult routes and a perceived lack of discipline on the part of the district when it came to student behavior on buses.

“Give support to the bus drivers, let them know we have your back,” Bass said. “You are not just an employee, you are part of a family. I want to bring that family aspect back into the JCPS culture.”

Another topic that has been on parents’ attention is the new safety measures JCPS is taking to prevent guns from being brought into schools. Everett believes the district should expand its use of gun detection systems.

“It’s a non-negotiable for me to have those gun detection systems in every school that we can put them in,” Everett said. “Also, I think we can add more cameras to the outside of school buildings to detect people approaching that maybe shouldn’t be there.”

In September, the shooting outside a Pleasure Ridge Park High School football game that killed a 17-year-old JCPS student left parents reeling.

As CEO of the non-profit youth mentoring program First Strike of Unity and Peace Inc., Bass said he would like to see more student outreach to get to the root causes of violence.

“One thing I do is work with the kids that way and talk to them and try to find solutions,” Bass said. “I’ve learned that most of it comes from financial opportunity. So we’re moving forward with that, we’re bringing everybody to the table, not just the adults, we’re bringing the kids in, so we can have a full circle of solutions.”

The JCPS school board will also have a chance to shape the district’s future when it leads the search for a new superintendent after Marty Pollio’s retirement in July 2025.

Everett said he would like to see candidates with college degrees and possibly business experience.

“Some kind of business experience, kind of big organizational experience because JCPS has 100,000 students with thousands of employees,” Everett said. “If you don’t know how to run an operation of that size, it just won’t work.”

“They have to be affordable,” Bass said. “They need to be able to go to different schools, go to different events and be recognized and also be able to be humbled and be able to accept and say they don’t know what’s going on.”

Two other board members will retain their seats for the next four years.

Tricia Lister was appointed to the council in September to represent District 2 after the resignation of council member Chris Kolb and ran unopposed in the election.

Incumbent Gail Strange retained her seat representing District 1, defeating challenger Mark Gatton.

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