MOUNT VERNON — Threatening clouds, rumbles of thunder and intermittent heavy showers greeted Mount Vernon High School students as they arrived for the start of a new school year.
With the elimination of high school busing as a cost-savings measure, alternate forms of transportation had to be used. At 7:30 this morning, lines of cars and other vehicles snaked around the high school drop-off point, filled one lane of Yellow Jacket Drive to Division Street and was backed up along Division Street to Mount Vernon Avenue. The westbound bumper-to-bumper traffic waiting to turn south onto Division Street from Mount Vernon Avenue was stalled alongside Cougar Drive and reached farther east, even past Lower Gambier Road.
The News talked with some parents as they dropped their children off at the high school.
“This sucks,” said Matt Dennison, who works nights and gets off work at 5 a.m. “My son has ridden the bus since he was in middle school. I live out toward Utica and I have to drive in here to pick him up and drop him off here at school and then drive home. ... His mom picks him up after school.”


