The week before spring break was kicked off with stringent enforcement on student drivers by school administration. Many students returned to their cars Monday morning to the sight of something like this:
Then, they might have been called down to the office, being told that they “parked illegally” that morning on school property. The most common “infraction” that was ticketed on Monday and throughout the week had to do with either a missing parking pass or not parking “in a legal spot,” including parking in the grass.
This first infraction brings to question the principle of parking passes in the first place. The school allows parents to drop their children off in the mornings and pick them up in the afternoon for free. The school provides transportation to students by way of the bus every morning and afternoon for free. But if you choose to drive yourself to school in your own car, you are told that you cannot park at school without paying a $15 mandatory fee. If you do not, your own property will be towed away, all at your own expense.
The assumed argument for this mandatory fee is that it covers the cost of “maintaining” the parking lot for students. However, when was the last time you saw this parking lot “maintained,” other than a blacktopping many, many years ago. If the school pays for the ability for parents to drop off and pick up their children and for school busses for every student, then they should also be able to pay for the “maintaining” of the student parking lot.
The second infraction, not parking “in a legal spot,” raises another important subject. Some mornings, “legal spots” are hard to find. For example, the black day co-op lot is completely full, meaning that students who are late to the game must either seek parking in the already crowded main lot, or, as many do, the grass. How are students supposed to park legally if there are not enough spots for them to do so in the first place?
Parking outside of the limits of the lines is also considered “illegal parking.” However, many lines are either not clear due to worn paint, or completely non-existent. If you can’t tell, this would make it difficult for a student to park legally, especially if they are not necessarily “early” to the parking lot in the morning.
We had the opportunity to interview Mr. O’Bryan, an assistant principal, who has seemed to be leading the force behind the recent enforcement of parking.
So why only the recent enforcement of these rules? Why only enforce the rules now, with less than 25 days remaining in the school year?
“I got a report [from staff] that the back corner by the gym, where the lines are sideways, is causing a bottleneck, which could cause a crash. So, I had to start looking into that, at that point I had to start putting parking tickets on there. And I can’t police one area without policing it all. That’s what’s led to this. It wasn’t just on a whim.”
What is the reasoning behind the parking passes in the first place? Like where you have to pay $15 to park.
“That, I don’t know. Because that’s before my time here. What I do know, is that we have the co-op lot, we have the student lot, we have the faculty lot. At the new school, we’re just gonna have one lot. So there won’t be a distinction. Next year, we’ll just have one lot.”
From the interview, it seems that there is some reasoning as to why the parking has been enforced more heavily in the recent weeks compared to the rest of the year. There is not, however, any kind of reasoning behind why we have parking passes in the first place, as those were established before the new administration arrived. We were also able to gather that parking at the new high school will be much more streamlined, with one large lot for everyone to share. Hopefully with this lot, and the new administration, paid parking passes will become a thing of the past and less tickets will be given to students who are just trying to get to school.
