Recently, students at Northwood have been voicing complaints about the school’s bus system. Many of these complaints pertain to overcrowding concerns and questions about the buses arrival and dismissal times. These problems are a result of many things, one being the school’s population, according to administration.
Northwood is at its capacity and currently has its highest enrollment ever. Because of this and the school’s limited number of buses and bus drivers, many bus routes have been overcrowded. This leads to extended route times. Buses with more riders also take a longer time to load and unload students at the school. According to assistant principal Philip Little, who oversees the bus system, putting more buses on the road would theoretically solve the problem, but that isn’t currently a plausible option. Because of school bus route plans made by the state that say bus routes have to be efficient, Northwood does not receive enough money each year to purchase new buses and then pay bus drivers that would more appropriately accommodate the size of our county, according to administrators.
“When you live in a county that’s the size of Chatham County, which is huge geographically, you can’t go and do one stop and pick up 30 kids, then go to another and pick up 15 kids and then come to the school,” principal Justin Bartholomew said. “We have to go all over the place, which is really inefficient, so we don’t get nearly as much money from the state to get new buses to put on the roads. That creates a huge problem.”
Students feel the repercussions of having a limited number of buses on a frequent basis.
“There are mornings when I get on [the bus] and there are no seats, so I basically have to sit in people’s laps,” sophomore Juleanne Harris said.
While this problem will not be changed immediately, administration has heard the student’s complaints and assures that Northwood’s expansion plan also covers buses and bus routes.
– By Riley Wolfgang