Late Buses Cause Problems for SBHS Students
SBHS students check the number of the bus to see if this their bus home.
December 13, 2022
A driver’s license to a high school student means freedom. Freedom to go out to the beach, hang out with your friends, go to a football game. But, to South Broward High School freshman Lilith Acanda, she would finally be able to rest at home after a long day of school.
“After school ends I don’t want to wait another hour in the sun then get home at like four,” said Acanda.
Acanda usually has to wait longer than any other students for her bus, at least thirty minutes, after school ends at 2:40. She said it would complicate things for her. Mostly, it was waiting time in the sweltering Florida sun or tropical downpours for a bus that never came.
Many times she had no choice but to ask her parents to leave work in order to pick her up which would make things difficult for them, but eventually her bus would come to pick her up, dropping her off home almost an hour and thirty minutes after school ended.
“I just felt really annoyed because I couldn’t do anything about it,” said Acanda.
South Broward High School freshman Veronica Batiste shares Acanda’s pain.
“I don’t own an umbrella and had to stand in the rain for 20 minutes in the morning waiting for the bus because I don’t have any other ride,” said Batiste.
The bus schedules have been leaving students waiting for a bus, making them late to school or making them wait for hours, sometimes in unpleasant weather. Assistant principal Mr. Grey Pluim, the bus administrator, is aware of this issue and says COVID is the problem.
“The problem is that ever since COVID there’s been bus drivers, so many, that quit and all we can do is just wait to hire new ones,” said Pluim.
When COVID hit and schools went online, there wasn’t a need for bus drivers because there were no students to drive to school. But when schools reopened and students returned, many of the bus drivers stopped showing up and according to Pluim, every bus driver this year except two are new.
“Even if it’s the bus driver’s fault for being late, it’s not like we can fire them since we have no one to replace them with, so we just have to deal with it,” said Pluim.
That doesn’t sit well with Taliyah Holmes, a freshman at South Broward High School who had to wait almost two hours after school for a bus. She finally had to order an Uber which cost her $10.
“The bus never came and to me Uber’s are expensive,” said Holmes.
Pluim says he feels bad for the students who have suffered these transportation problems, waiting for buses that never showed, having to make other arrangements to get to and from school.
He thinks the problem has gotten better compared to the beginning of the school year because the bus drivers are getting better, learning the routes, and there’s more people that they can hire.
“The farther it gets from COVID, the better it’s gonna get,” said Pluim.
