With the end of the school day comes a familiar scene: students pressed shoulder-to-shoulder, backpacks and instruments wedged between knees, a single lurch of the bus threatening to jostle them together. Every day, many students have no choice but to ride these MCPS-provided public school buses. However, when many high school students describe this daily experience as uncomfortably cramped, the safety of this essential form of transportation at WCHS becomes questionable.
Many of the buses used here in MCPS are described as “Type D” transit-style buses. While manufacturers claim they hold up to a maximum of 90 passengers, this number does not reflect the crowdedness that students are oftentimes overwhelmed with even when the buses are below this number. In fact, there is no single federally mandated standard for school bus passenger capacity, leaving these decisions largely up to states or local school systems despite their significant impact on student safety.
The lack of attention to this matter becomes apparent in the unaddressed differentiation between three-seaters for elementary schoolers versus for high schoolers. Why are the same number of high schoolers sitting in the same number of seats as elementary schoolers if high school teenagers have vastly different needs and space requirements, including differences in weight limits and physical size?…