Students returning to ACPS schools this year have noticed something is off. Hallways are more crowded, bathroom lines are longer, chairs have become a hot commodity. Were there always so many students? The answer is no. ACPS is in the midst of a yearslong overcrowding crisis, which is worsening by the year. Students are beginning to notice the issue now, with buildings at capacity and aging facilities unable to keep up with unprecedented numbers of kids. Overcrowding featured heavily at September’s Albemarle County School Board meeting, with both parents and students stepping up to demand action.
The meeting’s public comment section was dominated by calls for expansion and funding to address overcrowding. Additionally, two Albemarle High School students brought the board’s attention to the new challenges posed by weapons screening systems in over-capacity schools. Senior Sydney Duncan discussed her personal experience with screening-related delays: “These are four working detectors during the hours of 8:15 through 9:00, when 90% of our students enter the building for a student body of over 2,000.” Duncan went on to note that some of her classmates were up to an hour late for class due to the lines caused by overwhelmed screening systems.
Fellow AHS senior Indigo Mathon also highlighted the new issues arising from the lack of bathroom space. Virginia Administrative Code dictates that high schools must have at least one bathroom stall per 30 students, but Mathon claims that the ratio is approaching one to 55 at Albemarle. Both Duncan and Mathon expressed a general feeling of dehumanization and control brought on by the new policies and overcrowded schools. Mathon said that rather than making students feel safer, weapons screening “makes us feel stressed, punished, and frankly unwelcome in the place where we spend most of our time.”…