Taryn Bell fought to keep her son, Noah, at the school he'd attended since kindergarten.(J. Tyler Franklin / LPM)Fallen leaves crunched 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 wild in a breeze. Their mom, Taryn Bell, and dad, Sincerity Tabor, walked with them. From the outside, it was a kind of picturesque, Norman Rockwell version of the American school commute.Except it wasn’t at all what this family wanted.The family is at the nexus of multiple institutional pressures: A bus driver shortage and Jefferson County Public Schools’ decision to cut transportation in response; the district’s late-game facilities swap 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 that were deeply invested in seeing Noah, a Pokemon-loving fifth grader with a behavioral disability, succeed.Bell worked hard to keep Noah at Young. She filed a federal lawsuit. She forewent job opportunities and much needed income to spend hours a day on city transit getting Noah to and from school. In the end, the state’s new truancy law and the threat of jail forced her hand, and Bell transferred Noah to Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School, a half-mile from his home in the Shawnee neighborhood.“I wanted to give him all of the avenues and opportunities 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 are worried the west Louisville magnet may not be around much longer.How Noah lost his busIn a split vote last spring, the 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 to warn that axing 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's not going to 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 that getting Noah to school would be difficult, if not impossible.Then, near the end of the school year, JCPS threw another wrench into Bell’s plans: District leaders announced that Young would move 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 dropping for years. But last year the district stopped admitting new students and eliminated Young’s kindergarten. Now, the school is making do with just 100 kids — the lowest enrollment of any JCPS elementary school. The NAACP warned that schools like Young — magnets that serve high shares of low-income kids — would be hit hardest by transportation cuts, and may have to close.In July, Bell filed the federal lawsuit against JCPS. She and her co-plaintiffs argue the transportation cuts are discriminatory against low-income students and students of color because they restrict access to desirable educational programs if families can’t 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 her fingers and hoped that the district’s promise to bring back transportation to Young through an agreement to borrow TARC drivers would pan out.It hasn’t.TARC troublesFrom August through October Bell tried to make it work. Without a school bus or vehicle, the Bell family relied on TARC, the city’s beleaguered transit system, to get Noah to school. Getting to the bus was a struggle.Noah’s behavioral disorder causes him trouble sleeping. Getting him up around 7:00 a.m. — in time for an hour-long ride across town — was difficult and exacerbated his mood swings. Bell said the fifth grader would stomp through the house and refuse to leave.“I was feeling, like, tired and mad and stuff because I’m not a morning guy,” Noah explained. “I’m like an afternoon and end-of-the-day guy.”Their TARC journey itself was challenging and unpredictable, often making Noah late to 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 catching the transfer at Dixie Highway sometimes didn’t happen. If they did catch the transfer, the 18 bus would take them south a half dozen blocks through the California neighborhood to the school. But recent reductions to the city's underfunded transit system meant that connection came less often.Bell was not willing to send her 10-year-old alone on the TARC, and accompanying him meant she was unable to apply for much-needed employment. She was spending three to four hours each day in commute.“We get home, and it was maybe like two hours later I had to get back on the bus to go get him. 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 looming. Bell hasn’t worked outside the home since she had her oldest child 14 years ago. Her husband, Tabor, a cook by trade, hasn’t been able to work for more than a year. Tabor is coping with nerve damage due to complications from shingles. A condition called postherpetic neuralgia sends constant unbidden pain signals to his face, head and neck.Tabor spends much of his time in bed or on the TARC, getting to and from doctor’s appointments and gathering the documentation to make his case for disability benefits. He was often unavailable to pick Noah up in the afternoon while Bell walked to collect Bella, who was enrolled at King after JCPS cut Young’s kindergarten class. Noah Tabor (right) walks to school with his father, Sincerity Tabor.(J. Tyler Franklin / LPM)A few times, when Bell had money, she sent Tabor in a Lyft for Noah. Once, the school’s principal drove Noah home. But sometimes Bell decided to avoid the trouble and not send him at all.Tabor filed for disability insurance with the Social Security Administration in April, but found out in December his application was denied. Like the rest of the nation, Kentucky’s approval rate for disability insurance is low — less than 34%, according to figures from the U.S. Social Security AdministrationTabor plans to appeal. Bell and Tabor filed for bankruptcy in September to prevent the bank from foreclosing on their home. But they’re behind again, this time both on mortgage payments and the $187 monthly bankruptcy fee they owe.Bell and Tabor do their best to insulate their kids from financial stress. On Bella’s 6th birthday, Bell used food stamps to buy cupcakes for the girl’s kindergarten class. While Bella was sleeping, she hung decorations in her room — a repurposed banner from Noah’s 9th birthday and a gold balloon that Bell cleverly turned upside down to make a six and topped with a pink bow.‘So many little things’As Noah’s tardies and absences stacked up, Bell knew what was coming. She’s a parent advocate on several state and national advisory councils, including the State Interagency Council, the 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 3rd degree — a misdemeanor that carries up to a year in jail.Prosecution would only go forward “under extreme circumstances…in cases where guardians are unmoved by support efforts,” O’Connell said.Asked whether his office would take into consideration transportation challenges of magnet families who lost their bus, O’Connell said he would weigh those issues.“But there are ways to solve that,” he said. “If somebody's not reaching out to JCPS or not reaching out to all these various assistants and programs, then there's no excuse. There's no excuse. So if somebody wants to do that and test me, I wouldn't advise it.”As of December, the Jefferson County Attorney’s office had yet to charge any parents under the new law, but an office spokesperson said letters have been sent to 52 parents warning them about possible prosecution.By the end of October, Noah had racked up more than 30 unexcused absences. Bell said she called each day he was out or tardy to explain the issue, but records show his absences and tardies were marked unexcused. The most help the school could offer, Bell said, were free TARC passes.Picking up a criminal charge for truancy carries extra 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’s innocent of the allegations 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 absences, but the threat of incarceration was too frightening, 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’s angry that so many systems came together to force her hand: A short-staffed school district, an underfunded city transit, a punitive criminal justice system and a recalcitrant Social Security Administration.“That’s exactly why I do the advocacy work I do,” she said. “It’s so many little things that could be fixed in helping families in the long run.”So far, Bell said she and Tabor have been pleasantly surprised with King. Bell said the school has a negative reputation, but she has found the staff professional, caring and attentive. At first, the new classmates bullied Noah and picked on his hair. Administrators asked if they could move him to the other fifth grade class where he might fit in better socially, and it worked. Bell said he seems a lot 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.