Senior Parking in the Pool Lot

Senior+Parking+in+the+Pool+Lot

Polina Barilo, Journalist

With seniors already stressed about college applications, parking adds a lot of stress in the morning. The new tardy policy reads that if a student is late to class more than three times the student obtains a ´U´ in his or her citizen grade. The main cause for this stress is that parents use the further lane from the pool too often. This is an obstacle for seniors, because the line becomes longer and slower, which leads to seniors waiting to park for a longer time or not finding a parking spot at all. Also, parents sometimes park in student spots and only leave once the bell rings, which is very frustrating for students. All these things lead to tardies for seniors.

To get insight from the seniors on the issue, a poll was conducted asking them several questions regarding the parking lot issue. It was found that 88% of seniors surveyed believe that parents are a problem in the pool parking lot. The absolute majority dislikes the current situation which means that something needs to be done. What could the possible solutions be? In the poll two solutions were proposed. The first and most common solution would be that parents only drop off their kids at the lane closest to the pool (40.3% of seniors surveyed prefer this option). The second, more extreme option that 39% of seniors surveyed agree with is that parents should drop off their kids either at the middle school or the front office parking lot. In general, both solutions would help seniors a great amount, however the first one is easier to achieve and requires almost no change. The next question the poll asked has to do with tardies. 68% of seniors surveyed have already been late to their classes because they couldn’t find a parking space.

When seniors were asked about speeding in the parking lot, the 52% of seniors surveyed think that speed is an issue in the parking lot. There has only been one recent speeding accident in the parking lot, so overall, safety appears to not be a huge issue in the lot. Additionally, only 13.4% of seniors polled report that they have been in a hit-and-run situation or have noticed car damage at the end of the day.

This leads to the final question: is there a need for regulation on the parking lot? Slightly more than half of the seniors surveyed (50.9%) believe there should be security walking around. Overall, one thing can be deduced from this survey: restricting the lane farthest to the pool to seniors only will make the majority of 12th grade students less frustrated. Whether this is achieved through security regulation or a simple email sent out to parents notifying them of this issue, is for the school to decide.