EAGLE MOUNTAIN, Utah — After families raised concerns by posting videos about overcrowding on a school bus, the Alpine School District is starting a new route on Thursday.
Alex Craver is a junior at Cedar Valley High School. He lives three miles away from school, so he uses the bus to get there and back.
"Pretty annoying to have to walk when I’m scheduled to ride the bus,” said Alex.
He says there are days when he can't get on because the bus is full.
"There are kids sitting in the aisle, or like the very back of the bus where the back seats are and they'll sit back there, and some kids are sharing laps, some of them have their knees halfway through the aisle and kids are sitting on those,” said Alex, showing FOX 13 News some of the videos he took while riding back from school.
His sister Kayla has been calling the school and trying to raise awareness about this on social media.
"Honestly scared for the upcoming generations that are going to be in this school district," she said. "I don’t think parents can send their kids to school knowing that they are going to arrive safely, or even make it home safely, or even have transportation at this point. It’s shocking.”
We asked the Alpine School District what they are doing about this situation.
"We’ve received those reports; we've added an additional route to alleviate that,” said district spokesman Rich Stowell.
Alex said on days that the bus was full and he couldn’t get on, he got a note asking him to call the district to report the overcrowding.
"We've heard some rumors that notes have been passed around, that indicate that there might be overcrowding on buses. We haven’t substantiated that,” Stowell said. "In the case of bussing, it’s very important to us that our students get to school safely and on time. So typically, with transportation issues, we respond very very quickly."
"I hope that we get more buses and people start caring about our safety,” Alex said.
