| Anna L. Mallory

anna.mallory@roanoke.com, 381-8627

CHRISTIANSBURG -- If late school buses continue to roll into Blacksburg Middle School next week, as they had each day through Thursday, Principal John Wheeler said he might worry.

For now, he and the rest of the school system are shrugging off concerns about missed instructional time and unorganized bus routes that have longer-than-expected routes and students missing buses.

"It's not going to last forever like this," he said. "It's the first days of school. Most of this stuff is fairly normal."

On Monday, school officials blamed dense fog and a traffic wreck for buses that were 40 minutes late. By Thursday, buses shuttling to the Blacksburg Middle School campus at old Christiansburg Middle School had improved. They were about 15 minutes late, Wheeler said.

The holdup, according to a prepared statement from the school system, is traffic congestion on Prices Fork Road.

"As a result of the delay getting in and out of the Price's Fork area, the middle school and elementary school routes are also affected," spokeswoman Brenda Drake wrote.

They also argue that the delays are nothing new.

"It is not uncommon to continue route adjustment two to three weeks into the year as we monitor bus loads and routes times," the statement said.

This school year, students are asked to transfer buses.

A shuttle system was designed to accommodate the shift in Blacksburg Middle School students to their new campus in Christiansburg.

Students who bus to the new site in the morning are picked up by a bus through a home route, then taken to Blacksburg High School. After disembarking there, they switch to a shuttle bus that takes them to old Christiansburg Middle School. The system reverses in the afternoon.

On Monday, two Blacksburg Middle School students failed to make it from their shuttle buses to their home-route buses after school. School officials said all procedures were followed, and the students got home safely.

Parents also can drop off students for the shuttles, just as parents drop off the high school students.

Wheeler insists students have missed about 10 to 15 minutes in the mornings, and that any instructional time they miss can be made up during the school's 22-minute "Titan Time," an additional home room period. Ideally, the buses would arrive by 7:45 a.m., Wheeler said.

The school's first period classes, which last 45 minutes, are about four minutes longer than the other seven class periods, and he said he's cut back on morning announcements to make up for the limits in instructional time.

After school, the parent pickup system seems to run better at the new campus, Wheeler said, although lines of cars and vans do clog College Avenue and Sheltman Street.

The Virginia Department of Transportation also changed traffic patterns at North Franklin and Cambria streets on Wednesday to accommodate extra traffic at the U.S. 460 interchange for Blacksburg parents and students.

The far right lane of the northbound section of North Franklin was changed from a turn lane to a through/turn lane onto Cambria. And motorists turning right from Cambria onto North Franklin are now required to stop, rather than yield. On Sept. 14, the eastbound-through-lane lane on Cambria will be changed to a shared through/left-turn lane to allow for dual left turns onto North Franklin.

In addition to the middle school issues, Rivendell students -- those who attend the alternative education program displaced from old Christiansburg Middle School and sent to Shawsville Elementary School -- have 30- to 45-minute wait times outside Christiansburg High School in the mornings and the food that is sent to them is cold, according to several parents.