MHS parking lot needs assigned student parking spots

Maddy Neuwald, Staff Reporter

Parking at MHS isn’t just bad; it’s horrible.

In a survey that was open to MHS students via social media for about a week during February, 95 percent of around 85 respondents agreed that the school parking lot needs updating in some way.

The list of complaints goes on and on– potholes everywhere, congestion from parents dropping students off, students without passes parking, not enough parking spots, the long walk from the bottom lot to the front of the school…

While fixing the potholes is a whole issue in and of itself, there is one solution that could solve several of these common complaints: assigned parking spots.

It sounds crazy, right?

But neighboring Libertyville High School already has changed to using this method, so it doesn’t seem that outlandish anymore.

“Seniors who volunteered to share rides to and from school were allowed to paint reserved parking spots ahead of the new school year,” stated a Sept. 6, 2018, Daily Herald article titled “Why some Libertyville High seniors are decorating their parking spots” by Russell Lisua.

It also stated “about 40 spots have designs.”

With this new movement at Libertyville High School, many students have come to agree that this new change has improved the overall effectiveness of their parking lot.

“Since only students who volunteered to sign up for the carpool program were given assigned spots, we were given the spots closest to the school,” said Kylee Krauss, senior at Libertyville High School.

Although Libertyville has not yet made the complete switch to assigned parking for all student drivers, students have responded well to the change (At LHS, only seniors are allowed to park since their parking lot is much smaller than that of MHS).

Applying assigned parking spots for all drivers at MHS would be more efficient and beneficial for our school and would improve the experience for not only students but parents as well.

“I think that assigned parking would lead to less traffic in the parking lot and less congestion with parents dropping off students, as they are usually always in the way. Also, students wouldn’t be late to class,” Senior Cayla Manaligod said.

With assigned parking, students would be able to arrive later to school, knowing that they would have a guaranteed spot and would have no incentive to get there earlier for a spot close up. This would hopefully reduce the traffic congestion, as students and parents would not be in the parking lot at the same time since parents tend to drop off their students earlier than drivers tend to arrive at the school.

Another benefit this idea could bring is deterring students without parking passes to park illegally.

“Assigned parking would create a more organized parking lot at the school,” Senior Julia Sulicka said. “There would be less problems with getting stickered because people can’t park randomly.”

With assigned parking, if a student who did not have a pass parked in someone else’s spot, the school would be notified right away. Hopefully, this would deter more students from parking illegally at the school.

Therefore, I propose an assigned parking system to be put in place for the upcoming school year. This system would allow seniors to get assigned spots in the Senior Lot while juniors would receive assigned spots in the Junior Lot.

I also propose that spots be determined by how involved the students are in school, their attendance record and also by a raffle. For example, if a student plays three sports throughout the year, which causes them to be at school earlier and/or later, he or she would receive a spot close up.

Furthermore, students would be allowed to decorate their spots and personalize them to their wants. This would help promote student bonding while also providing a fun back-to-school activity for students. At the end of the year, the school could then cover up the decorations with a new coat of asphalt, which would be paid for by the parking pass fees.

This change, though, isn’t just going to happen overnight. If the student body agrees that this change should take place, then we should continue to contact and encourage our deans to reconsider the current parking strategy.

I mean, imagine being able to decorate your parking spot?!

Yes, we definitely need this change.