North Shore Times (New Zealand)
Sick of detention, teen wants change
Volkan Ozyurteri is sick of being late to school, so he’s taken matters into his own hands.
The 15-year-old Takapuna resident says he was late to school almost every day this year, thanks to an ill-timed school bus, and has received detention for his tardiness.
‘‘It’s not right to have a school bus make you late to class.’’
While the teachers at the school he attends, Takapuna Grammar School, are largely understanding, he says, everyone has been sitting on their hands waiting for change.
‘‘They would think it was going to change but no one was making a change. I knew I needed to be that person.’’
So Volkan spent a week documenting the details of his daily bus ride, including the time it picked him up and arrived at school, and the number of people on board.
‘‘I found that there would be busloads of people late to class every day sometimes by five to six minutes,’’ Volkan says.
Volkan catches the 062 bus from Takapuna to school every day except Wednesday and says in the week of May 1, the bus arrived after the school’s first bell time of 8.35am. All seats on the bus were full every day that week.
He says on Wednesdays, school starts at 9.30am and so most students forgo the 8.30am bus for the later public bus.
‘‘The passengers on the public bus seem annoyed having a bunch of kids on the bus,’’ Volkan says.
He observed the bus to be ‘‘overflowing with students and public’’ with many people left at bus stops.
Volkan has passed his survey to North Shore councillor Chris Darby and hopes it can result in a departure time five minutes earlier and a Wednesday departure of 9.15am, so students don’t take over the public bus and aren’t 45 minutes early to school.
He says, on some days, students give up on catching the bus and get a lift to school, adding to the already congested Lake Rd.
Darby says it is ‘‘refreshing’’ to see a young person step out and take initiative to create change.
Auckland Transport media manager Mark Hannan says a change can be investigated if it does not impact on the run the bus does beforehand.
‘‘There’s been some great work from Volkan about this service. Auckland Transport will talk to NZ Bus, who operate the service, and we will see if they can start the service earlier.’’