It is important for students who become involved in extracurricular activities to have some form of transportation to and from home. Unfortunately, their available options have been drastically reduced as of late.
Because of overcrowding on school buses, the 4:30 late bus recently barred high school students from entry. The bus was only allowed to trasnport middle schoolers.
This forces students who are let out of after school programming to wait anywhere that they can until the 5:15 buses arrive.
If the school wants students to be able to participate in extra curricular activities, then they need to provide adequate transportation for Schreiber students.
Instead of accommodating the increased traffic of students on the 4:30 bus, administration has decided to continue to fund the previously sparsely populated later buses.
As the weather gets colder, this becomes a less viable option and students are forced to sit around unproductively in school hallways—getting in the way of busy custodians or other extra curricular activities—as they can not spend their idle time outdoors.
Even more noteworthy is the fact that Schreiber students were not notified about the change in bus policy, which resulted in the embarrassment and frustration of affected students whose after school plans were altered by administrative changes.
School officials need to come up with a better strategy for managing transportation options.
At the very least, please offer the reasoning behind these sudden and drastic changes.
Many students go completely uninformed regarding the available means of late transportation. As many students do not drive and have parents that work, a lack of transportation is incovienent.
There is no easily available information about which bus routes apply to which students, and the appropriate routes are labeled differently than the buses that arrive immediately after school.
Students receive bus passes at the beginning of the year with no information about extracurricular transportation. This makes it difficult for them to commit to participating in activities, as it is not clear how they will be able to get a ride home.
If the argument, then, is that late busing is not fully utilized, it is invalid, because not enough students are aware of the late buses to take advantage of them.
Students deserve to know the status of their busing options. To ensure that all students have a safe ride home, that status needs to be improved.