Late buses have been a problem since my early days of middle school. It was not until my sophomore year that I decided I’d had enough, and it is was finally time to start carpooling. At first getting a ride in the mornings saved a lot of time. Finally, I wasn’t ridiculously late to school. All this changed however when a former student’s gun went off on school grounds, and Grady cracked down on security more than ever before. This recreated the tardiness problem for everyone who decided to drive or carpool to avoid the always-tardy bus.
APS’s solution for the 2013-2014 school year was to push the schedule back 15 minutes, which is a very temporary solution and has only made everyone even later to school. Now, “The Line” stretches across the courtyard to the student parking lot. As security checks take exponentially more time than they did before the incident. Now, it doesn’t matter if you take the bus or try to carpool.
When “The Line” begins to dwindle, late buses begin to arrive. The intensity of the security diminishes when “The Line” disappears, mostly because the teachers, who run the security, have classes to teach. Students don’t even need “The Line” to be late because buses continue to do the hard work for them. The buses simply can’t figure out how to get to school at a reasonable time, which directly hurts students’ education.
After the implementation of the unbelievably time-consuming security measures and the continuation of late buses, the APS administration realized that it interfered with the students’ time in class. Students are technically supposed to still arrive at 8:15 a.m. so that they have enough time to go through security, walk up four flights of stairs and make it to class by 8:30 a.m. Moving the bell schedule didn’t give students the extra time because it pushed it all back, including the buses and the security procedure.
The constant tardiness makes it much harder for teachers, especially if teachers are conducting the security procedure, to start their classes on time, eventually shortening the amount of learning time.
Students will always adapt to these changes, whether it be for better or worse. Sophomores, juniors
and seniors take advantage of the extra time provided and are enjoying an extra 15 minutes of sleep. Eventually students will begin to sleep even later and the dreaded “Line” will make these students just as late to class.
Lately, “The Line” has begun to die down, but it all depends on the teacher or administrator conducting it. This year it could take students three or 10 minutes to fight their way into the building.
Bus drivers will arrive proportionally to when they have arrived in the years prior. They have already shown that the extra time is not even being used. More days than not, Quinette Rhodes-Igherighe has makes an announcement to allow the students a minimum of 10 minutes to make it to class.
The general term, “students”, allows not only the children who were on the late buses to get in to class freely but also allows any other student who is late on their own fault to avoid a tardiness.
Students begin to take advantage of the announcement which was made to pardon the students who were affected by the late bus drivers but also gives all late students a “free pass”.
The later bell schedule only allows the process to take place 15 minutes later and is not a viable solution to the problem at hand.
