Chaos. That’s one word to describe the school parking lot. Students racing to their cars, not afraid of total embarrassment, just to get out of the school parking lot in a timely manner. Cars racing over the nasty speed bumps, barely missing the pedestrians. Horns blaring, people cutting each other off, cars backending each other. It’s like upon entering the parking lot people forget how to drive. Everyone always blames the sophomores for this chaos but we need to start accepting that sophomores are always going to intrude on the upperclassman’s parking spaces and that’s never going to change; however, what needs to change is the parents.
We have tried to kick the sophomores out of the parking lot for years. It’s the same repeated pattern: as more sophomores get their licenses the more crammed the parking lot becomes, and the less spots available. Then, all the upperclassmen get mad at the sophomores and the security for not enforcing parking passes. Security will eventually start enforcing it but not until it’s about three-fifths of the way through the school year, and there are still so many ways to get around the enforcement. The real chaos begins with the parents.
In the morning, parents slow down the four-way stop. They allow their kids to take their sweet old time as they jump out of the car at the last possible moment in the middle of the road holding up traffic. Although these parents still cause the everyday annoyance, they are much better than the parents dropping off their kids right in front of the door, while driving in the middle of the road in the process. Most high school students don’t need to be dropped off right in front of the door. When I was an underclassmen, my dad dropped me off blocks away from the school to avoid the horrible traffic on his way to work. I know that the parents don’t enjoy the chaos of the parking lot, so why don’t they make it easier for themselves and make their kids get just a little bit of exercise on the way to school.
The chaos in the morning doesn’t even compare to the chaos in the afternoon. Now I totally understand parents with kids in the medically fragile program and are in wheelchairs needing special assistance coming into the parking lot to get their kid, but not all parents need to pick up their kids right in front of the school. Parents picking up their kids right in front of the door are taking away space and time for parents that actually need to pick up their kids. Not to mention if they are needing to pick up their kids there is literally a designated spot to pick them up that clearly none of the parents understand. Once again, there is no need to cause even more dead-stop traffic when if they made their kids walk a block they would get home much earlier.
Lastly, the bus loop is off limits. Parents dropping off their kids in the bus loop intrudes on the bus’s space and holds up the four-way stop. There have been multiple instances where I have witnessed a car being stuck in the middle of the intersection because they are trying to enter the bus loop while a bus is trying to exit. Using the bus loop as a drop off lane causes frustration from the bus drivers and cars trying to get through the four-way stop. It is not a drop-off space for cars, it is only a drop-off space for kids getting off and on the buses.
Parents, you would make everyone’s lives easier, including yourselves, if you got out of the parking lot. You take up space in an already crammed parking lot causing chaos and frustration from everyone involved. If you need to drop off your kids use the designated drop off zone in the front of the school but other than that parents need to GET OUT of the parking lot.
