Parents, Students Crowd Welcome Center for School Registration

MACON, Georgia (41NBC/WMGT) – A line of frustrated Bibb County parents and students wrapped around the Welcome Center Monday morning on the first day of school. Some waited for hours to sign up their kids as school officials tried to speed up the process.

“When I first got here the line was wrapped around the building,” says Bibb County parent Cordell Williams. “The school system, period, just need to do better. It’s awful. This is some slave-type of stuff, just wrapped around the building, it’s hot.”

She was not alone in her frustration.

“”They only have two lines and two people registered in, that’s ridiculous for thousands of people,” parent Tabitha Whitehead said.

“Been here since 8 o’clock going on 11 o’clock,” says Sabrina Hyman. “These kids shouldn’t be out here for this long.”

Registration has been open all summer. School officials are using the Welcome Center as a singular, centralized location for signup, taking registrars out of individual schools. Parents say Monday, that proved to be a bad idea. 41NBC asked Hyman why she waited until the last minute if registration was open all summer.

“Some of us got jobs that don’t allow us to do it. I drive a truck. I don’t be home. This is my week off. I don’t want to sit here all day long,” she says,

“They shouldn’t have never took out the registration from the schools, they should have kept it the way that it was,” says Williams.

Interim Superintendent Steve Smith says officials had no idea the crowd would be this large on the first day.

So, they called in more registrars.

They also brought the crowd out of the heat and offered them water. Dr. Smith says the school system and parents might need to make changes.

“I think it’s a combination of two things: We may need to do a more thorough job in communicating it. I’m not saying we haven’t, I don’t know that we have. That’s one of the things that I will assess after seeing what’s taken place here. The second thing is that parents–they have all summer children. They don’t need to wait until the last minute to come and register their children,” says Dr. Smith.

If you weren’t able to register your student today, the Welcome Centerl be open again tomorrow from 8 am-6pm.