Since last year there have been several changes to parking around West Side. This is because the parking lot is not large enought to fit all student drivers and staff members. However, there are still some presiding issues that remain unresolved from the construction.

The main problem seems to still be that there are not enough parking spots for student drivers. Every year, the school gives out more passes than there are spots to account for students missing days or going on field trips. This year, there were 178 passes given out for access to the parking lot’s 148 spaces. Although this does not include the extra fourteen spaces on Meridian, many West Siders agree that giving out this many passes is a bit excessive and that it causes issues for students finding a spot.

Another issue that results in less parking spaces being available is that the school does not require the viewing of a student’s actual driving license in order to get a pass. Therefore, it is possible for sophomores and other students who have not yet gotten their liscences to get parking spaces, leaving fewer options for those students with liscenses. The clear answer to this problem is to require students to show their driving liscencses as part of the process of getting a parking pass.

Although there are still several things to work out in our school’s parking system, there are other issues from the school’s standpoint that make them hard to resolve. The school has no direction in which to expand, making it impossible to create a bigger lot in order to add more spaces. It is also important for there  to be parking spaces to account for not only full-time staff, but for part-time teachers.

Complaints such as sophomores getting too many passes are virtually irrelevant, as sophomores are a minority in the population of student’s with passes. Students must also keep in mind that the school did make a significant change for parking in the past year; 20 new teacher spots were added on Leslie Avenue, freeing up 18 additional spots for students.

There are still a few kinks to work out in the system, but for the most part the school is working at these difficult problems, and in The Scarlette staff’s opinion, given the high number of students who are able to park every day, complaints are often not founded on a real problem.