Driver shortage led the county to reconfigure school bus routes trying to "stretch" existing drivers, but the new routes made things even worse. Kids weren't stuck on the bus, they were stuck waiting for buses at bus stops.

Better articles:

• https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/new-school-bus-routes-disaster-kentucky-superintendent-admits-102170256
• https://apnews.com/article/kentucky-school-bus-delays-jefferson-louisville-8a8e37aa62012c4f53d8d3ddf06dcac9
• https://edition.cnn.com/2023/08/11/us/kentucky-schools-transportation-disaster/index.html

If instead of clicking all the links you had read the article, it's explained:

The Associated Press reported that the school district spent $199,000 to hire the AlphaRoute engineering firm to create a plan that would cut the number of bus routes and stops. According to The Louisville Courier-Journal, the school district changed its bus schedule and start times this year in an attempt to cope with a bus driver shortage.

They were short on bus drivers, and they hired a firm to come up with a plan that would "make it work". Specifics of the routes aren't given, but I'd imagine that they were completely ridiculous for any kids to have still been on buses six or seven hours after school got out.

Really terrible bus routes trying to skate by with a miniumum of drivers.

They weren’t stuck on buses they were waiting on buses to arrive. There were school staff with them.

Yeah I find the idea of that happening very unlikely. You'd think the parents would hunting down their kids before that happened.

The reason was to generate a click bait headline. Kids nowadays are really dedicated to their social media.