As part of the ongoing efforts to improve the campus traffic flow, faculty members from both VHS and FPMS are enforcing some new changes this year.

“When we started off the year we realized the first day of school that the traffic was getting a little bit worse than it had been in the prior year because of our growth,” Associate Principal Wendy Sturdevant said. “We have more cars, we have more buses, we have more everything. The first Monday we started implementing changes.”

The changes were made after the first week of school when it was taking students and bus drivers longer than usual to get out of campus. Many students started complaining about the amount of time they were spending in their cars just sitting in the parking lots.

“I usually have to race toward the bus line from the annex to get on it,” junior Janine Alries said. “If I am unable to make it, I have to wait till my mom gets home to get home. If I make it on, it usually takes around 60-90 minutes to get home.”

The APs began routing the buses to cut the traffic lines to get out of campus before the students. Due to the buses not having working air conditioning, the goal was to get the buses out of the traffic as soon as possible.

“I realize that the school buses don’t have AC and that’s why they get let out before us,” senior Eva Froehlich said. “It makes sense, but I know a lot of people who don’t have AC in their cars either. I think in this situation everyone is at a disadvantage.”

As a temporary solution for the traffic, the AP team has split the buses into two groups. One flow of buses goes to building 2 and the rest of the buses that roll over to the middle school to the cafeteria.

“We are using our SROs [School Resource Officers] to help get the buses blocked off and on the road,” Sturdevant said. “The middle school team has their administrator staff out their directing traffic. We are working with the district on getting more support with that, because it is taking a lot of manpower right now.”