A Parking Policy With No Consequences

To the Editor:

Our daughter is a senior in high school. Seniors have some rights that lower classmen do not. The most coveted privilege of all: she can drive to school. She got her license in November so she missed the first opportunity to get a parking permit. Disappointing, but, hey, them’s the rules. She got on a waiting list in hopes that a parking space might become available before the school year ended. Time marched on and one day she came home with a parking permit permission slip. We couldn’t fill it out fast enough, and the check to accompany it, too. For a few days, she left the house and all was well. Then, one morning, the phone rang:

She: “Mom, it’s me. Could you call the attendance office and tell them I’m gonna be late? There’s no place to park so I have to park in the commuter lot and I’ll miss the second bell.....”

Me: “How can there be no place to park.....you have a permit! OK, I’ll call.”

I explained that my daughter had driven to school, couldn’t find a place to park and would be late. What did I learn from the nice woman who answered the phone? I was told that, yes, she understood that it was a problem. She sympathized but there was nothing they could do about it, lots of kids without permits take the spaces. The school doesn’t have staff to look for cars that are parked without permits. Actually, she confided, she and other staff members hesitate to leave the grounds on their lunch hours as they are afraid they may not be able to park when they return. Let me get this straight, I said. We waited several months, paid for a permit, and still my daughter is not guaranteed a place to park? Yep, she said, that’s right. She offered to let me talk to the vice principal but stated that there wouldn’t be anything he could do either so I declined.

Let’s recap: the school issues parking permits and collects a fee but fails to enforce the parking policy. The administration is aware of the problem but offers no solution. The kids who have a legitimate permit are basically told “too bad” if they can’t find a parking spot. Some staff members also encounter parking problems but accept them as inevitable. Hmm. No wonder the kids without permits sneak in, they know there won’t be any consequences.

Maybe this is too simple a solution, but when I was in school, our administration had a surefire way of issuing parking permits. If there were 200 available spaces, there were 200 permits issued. The permits were numbered to coincide with the numbered spaces. If a student with a permit arrived at his spot and another car was in that place, the offending car’s owner would be paged (or the car would be towed) and the student could then park in his rightful place. Worked then, might it work now?

Debra Saviano

3 Shamrock Lane, Newtown                                             April 7, 2008