Savannah-Chatham working on student pick-up traffic concerns

SAVANNAH, Ga. (WTOC) - With a new school year comes new challenges. Challenges the Savannah-Chatham County Public School System (SCCPSS) is working to address.

Some parents said their students’ bus never came, while others say they waited hours to pick them up from their first day.

SCCPSS welcomed back nearly 37,000 students to their schools, but that didn’t come without challenges according to some parents.

“I was really upset because of the simple fact that you have my child standing outside for almost an hour and a half, two hours and the bus never came,” parent Ashanti Littlejohn said.

Littlejohn has three students at three SCCPSS schools. The bus driver shortage really put her in a bind, but she says it was worst for her 6th grader set to attend New Hampstead K-8. While she was picked up Thursday, she says the bus was late.

“Be more proactive and communicate and kind another resolution. There’s other schools nationwide who have found a resolution. I don’t understand why Chatham County has not done that,” Littlejohn said.

But district leaders say they are working towards that now. Superintendent Dr. Ann Levett says they maximized their routes and are transporting more than 18,000 students. She says they know there were challenges with drop-off and pick-up and are looking to address those.

“Just know that we are working diligently to look at every way that we can to reduce the frustration and also reduce the long lines it’s not helpful to anyone that the lines are long,” Dr. Levett said.

Campus police leaders said they have already adjusted their traffic flow and have seen improvements.

“What we do is we look at how the traffic is flowing, and we identify where the congestions occur once we identify those areas then we find ways around that,” Board of Education Police Department Deputy Chief Aaron Graves said.

District leaders say they had additional traffic help Thursday, made changes to the checkpoints and more. They say if you experience any challenges with a bus or your school pick up/drop off you should first talk to your school’s administration so they can work to help.

“We saw the frustration of many people so we do what we can to calm folks, let them know that we are addressing it, we’re working on it and we’ll, we make things better, you know that’s our job,” Deputy Chief Graves said.

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