You didn’t get to the light on 21st on time, and now you only have ten minutes before you are supposed to be seated in class. If you get lucky enough, you can find parking and get to class on time.
But nine minutes later, you are still driving around, circling like a vulture, and not a single spot has opened. The clock is ticking down. If you don’t want to be late, you’d better find a spot, and so far, the only option is illegal parking on the end of rows.
The bell rings and you give up. Illegal parking it is.
Parking has always been a problem at Highland—especially for students who don’t have a first period and need a parking spot for second—but recently new parking spots have been implemented in the driver’s education range, and Highland Principal Jeremy Chatterton is hoping it will help.
At a school of nearly 2,000 students, around 300 parking passes have been sold, and there are only around 230 parking spots in the lot, which leaves nearly 70 students to park on the street, or at neighbor’s houses—which isn’t always appreciated—and doesn’t even count the students that don’t have passes.
The range is a large, paved area of Highland’s property that is frequently unused throughout the day, as driver’s education range drives only take place after school hours. It’s been a frustration to Chatterton throughout the years that it just goes unused all day, while students are constantly needing to find parking on the street and at neighboring houses.
“It’s something I’ve been pushing for, for a couple of years, just to increase parking,” Chatterton said. “I was just trying to open up [parking options], and really just alleviate any parking issues.”
His main focus was to allow students to have more, better parking, in hopes that they would stop using street parking, and hopefully stop all parking controversies.
Chatterton’s first thought was a hope to redo and repaint the entire range, and make it look nicer, however in the end, the parking spots were painted green so they wouldn’t conflict with the yellow and white of the range. Which wasn’t what Chatterton exactly had planned, but it provides more places for students to park during the school day, which was the ultimate goal.
“We only have like 220-250 parking spots as is, so anything we can use hopefully will help,” Chatterton said.
Hopefully, the additional parking spots in the range will allow more students to be on time as well as not running into any parking issues before or after school. Despite this, the parking area is still a range for driver’s education students, and they start driving right after school.
“The trick is we do need cars out of there by 3:30,” Chatterton said. “I know there has been some frustration from (Highland drivers education teacher Kurt) Schneider that cars aren’t out of there as quickly as they should be.”
However, he is hoping that as time goes by, students will become better at moving their cars when school gets out.
So next time you need to get to class on time, use the new parking spots in the range, just make sure you are out of there by 3:30.
