Buses for NJROTC

Buses+for+NJROTC

Junior Reserve Officer’s Training Corps (JROTC) is a citizen’s course that aims to instill values such as leadership and responsibility. While the JROTC course is not available at RHS, it is available to RHS students as an elective through the process of cross enrollment.

RHS has four students who are currently enrolled in the Navy JROTC program (NJROTC) at Gaithersburg High School. In the beginning of the year there were five students enrolled, but one was forced to drop out because she could not find suitable transportation.

Sophomore Aryana Dadpay is cadet in NJROTC at Gaithersburg HS. Dadpay’s parents are tasked with driving her to school every single morning for first period at Gaithersburg HS, waiting 45 minutes for the end of the class and then driving her to RHS.

“It’s a really big burden because my dad has to take at least two hours off of work every single day and he’s been doing this for the entire year,” Dadpay said.

Throughout the 2015-16 school year up until April 22, she has been working with the nonprofit, Learnserve Fellows program to bring awareness of this issue.

After completing Learnserve, Dadpay reached out to Assistant principal John Haas, who is incharge of RHS transportation. He said that after meeting with Dadpay, he has reached out to Tracey Marquez, the Supervisor of the MCPS depot to open communications about the possibilities of MCPS providing transportation.

“I have communicated with Tracey Marquez. At this point she does not feel confident that there will be an NJROTC bus,” Haas said.

One of the big conflicts with funding a bus from Gaithersburg HS to RHS is that only five students are currently enrolled in the class, and not all of them would be using the bus transportation. However, according to Dadpay, more students would be inclined to enroll in the NJROTC class if it were more accessible to students in the future. While the current outlook is not very optimistic, Haas said that he will definitely pusue this issue given that other MCPS schools with NJROTC cross-enrolled students do provide similar bus services.

“I would be very surprised if one school had a bus and we don’t. Why don’t we?”

This is exactly the question that Dadpay asked herself.

The answer is to come as Haas said he is continuing communications Marquez to fully understand this complex situation.

“I will continue to work with her to get a little more understanding on the ins and outs of why there wouldn’t be a bus,” Haas said.