One major privilege in the high school is being able to drive to school.

Parking passes allow students the privilege of driving themselves to school.

They are available for juniors and seniors with a valid driver’s license. The passes cost $50 and require a form to be filled out before the beginning of the school year. The passes are given on a ‘first come, first serve’ basis in order to prevent overflow parking in the lots. Students are issued a gold pass that they can attach to their rear view mirror and are required to be easily visible to somebody walking past.

There are requirements for parking at the school. The first requirement is tat the vehicle must have a valid parking pass.
At the beginning of the school year, most people follow this rule. The administration is diligent in checking for offenders, and after a few warnings, those people tend to fix the problem; however, in the recent winter months, the number of people parking in the school parking lot without a clearly visible parking pass has increased dramatically. Walking from the back of the parking lot, down even just a single row, students can see many cars that have no pass hanging, a fact that frustrates many students.

Another requirement for having a parking pass is the understanding that certain spots are unavailable for students to park. These spots include any spots specifically marked for teachers, such as “Traveling teachers,” “Traveling Music Teachers,” and “Reserved” spots. Other spots include every spot in front of the first light post in the first lot of the school. These spots are reserved for teachers and staff only and are marked with a different color.

An increase in the number of students that disregard this rule is obvious in the cold winter months. Many students do not want to walk from the back of the parking lot to the school in the rain, wind or snow; however, students that take up these spots cause teach- ers to park further back in student spots, which causes the students parking in the correct spots to park in the very back lot, the gravel lot or even the tennis courts, which also frustrates the many students who are following the guidelines put in place when getting a parking pass.

“I think it’s disrespectful when students try to park in the teacher’s spots,” senior Amanda Kenepp said.

In the recent months with the cold weath- er hitting harder, students have taken to even parking in spots that are not actual parking spots. They have parked at the end of the first parking lot where people drive through, blocking that portion of the drive. Not only is this unfair to other students, safety is also a concern, as these cars are parked in a place where people are
supposed to be able to drive through and block a potential way to exit the parking lot quicker.

While the administration does their best to prevent these offenses from happening, it is impossible to keep every student within the rules without somebody checking every car in the parking lots the school does not have the staff or funds for this kind of demand. Students believe that it would be better if there was more organization in the parking lot.

“It shouldn’t be a free-for-all,” senior Julia Ryan said.

Other students have thought of ideas that could give a little more organization to the parking. One of these ideas includes having reserved spots. When students get a parking pass, they are given a specific spot to park. This would help every student, as no one would have to move their car in the middle of the day and interrupt their education. It would also help cut down on people parking without a pass because every space would have an assigned student.

This design would require the parking lot to have work done. Each spot would have to be numbered in order for students to know where to park. Suggestions came that other schools have a policy similar to this and that the students could paint their spot with a number or a name when they acquire their pass.

Multicolored Microsoft Excel spreadsheets detailing every class available at the high school circulated the halls. These schedules found them- selves crushed at the bottom of backpacks, scattered around school like the lingering dead leaves in fall, and the schedules found themselves being pulled out during class periods to be compared with other schedules. While this time is filled with the excitement that comes with planning for the next school year, this exhilarating haze is causing very smart students to make very unintelligent decisions.

A frequent topic of conversa- tion between underclassmen and future seniors is scheduling, and as they compare their plans for next year, it almost turns into a competition for who is taking more AP or honors classes. It feels good to put a check mark in a box for an AP or honors class and have a teacher from that respective subject initial it, but this is a seriously dangerous game. Seeing an upper-level class on a sheet of paper is deceiving.

When the title of an AP or honors course is typed out in 10 pt. font squished together with the rest of the school’s curricu- lum, it seems doable; however, some students fail to understand the depth that those 10pt. font words have. Students fail to evaluate not only the difficulty of the class and how multiple AP and honors classes’ work- loads will interact with each other but also the emotional and physical toll these classes take on a person. The emotional/ physical stress should be one factor students consider.