Addressing Concerns About Student Drivers on Route 243

Over the past several days, our community has raised serious concerns on social media about reckless driving involving student vehicles on Route 243 near our Chesapeake campus. We've reviewed the comments and shared reports, including an incident in which a driver crossed the double yellow line, nearly causing a head-on collision. We hear you, and we're disappointed too. This kind of driving doesn't reflect the standard we hold our students to, and it puts many people at risk. The safety of our students, our staff, and everyone else on that road matters to us, and we want you to know what we have been doing about it and how you can help.

What's Outside of Our Control

Once a student leaves our campus, we don't have legal authority over how they drive. That authority belongs to the Lawrence County Sheriff's Office and the Ohio State Highway Patrol, both of whom we partner with closely. Their ability to patrol the area around our campus at any given moment depends on what else is happening across the county, so coverage isn't constant, especially when dozens of other schools start their day at the same time. We encourage them to prioritize our campus area whenever they're able, and we'll keep asking.

What We're Already Doing On Campus

Our dismissal procedure holds driving students on campus until county buses have left and have had time to clear the road ahead of them. Staff are positioned in the parking lot during dismissal to monitor traffic as students leave, and last year, we added speed bumps to our driveway and parking lot to slow vehicles down on campus. We take reports of erratic or aggressive student driving seriously: we counsel those students one-on-one on the seriousness of erratic driving, and we've suspended parking privileges for repeat offenders. We've also met with every driving student, not just those reported, to review safe vehicle operation and the consequences of careless or aggressive driving, especially on the winding roads around our campus. We make daily announcements to our students about safe driving, with additional reminders whenever roads are wet or conditions are otherwise poor. We've also launched our own driver's education program, which will serve many of our students going forward and speaks directly to the kind of behavior we're trying to prevent. We expect it to have a lasting, positive effect on driver safety.

How You Can Help

Every detail you can give us helps: make, model, color, stickers, decals, or anything else that stands out. Please don't hold back a report just because you don't have all of it. That said, a license plate number is what lets us confirm we have the right vehicle with certainty, so we can follow up directly with that student. If you get one, include it. Call our high school office at (740) 867-6641 with whatever information you have, along with the date, time, and location. Leave a voicemail if no one is available to take your call. We investigate every report.

One important safety note: please don't try to film or photograph the incident while you're driving. Doing that adds a second distracted driver to an already dangerous situation. If you're a passenger or you can safely pull over first, that's the time to capture details; otherwise, just remember what you can and call it in once you're stopped.

We know a social media thread can't fix a dangerous stretch of road, and we don't expect this statement to either. But we wanted our community to hear directly from us: we're paying attention, we're already taking action within the authority we have, and we need your help to do more. Thank you to everyone who has spoken up about this. Keep the reports coming.