‘Extremely late’: School bus overcrowding means long rides for Indian Land students

INDIAN LAND, S.C. — Parents in Indian Land are complaining about overcrowding on school buses, and some students are having to deal with rides that are nearly two hours long.

They told Channel 9′s Tina Terry on Wednesday that something has to change. Some of the parents think it’s a shortage of bus drivers that’s behind the problem, but regardless of the cause, they say the delays and overcrowding are burdensome and dangerous.

After the bell rings every day at schools across Indian Land, the students have to pack on school buses to travel home. Some of the buses have multiple kids squeezing into just one seat.

“I could understand if it’s like kindergarten through elementary; but like middle and high schoolers, to me, that’s a safety hazard,” said Shawn Drakeford, one of several parents who are speaking out about the crowding. “It’s a safety issue.”

Drakeford, who told Terry that he drives a school bus in another district, said his cousins have endured long bus rides since the start of the year.

“It was like the second day of school; she had called me, she was like, ‘The bus is already running extremely late,’” Drakeford said.

He and others on Facebook told Terry that those long rides are still the norm. Some say their kids leave early in the morning and don’t get off the bus until after 5 p.m.

Drakeford says he wants to see the overcrowding issue addressed.

“These children are the faces of tomorrow, their safety matters,” he said.

Terry contacted a spokesperson for the school district Wednesday morning asking how many drivers they still need, and how it’s impacting seating and routes. We were told that someone from the transportation department would get information, but that wasn’t made available as of publication time.

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