This year, the administration announced two things. The first was that all parking passes would be free instead of the typical five-dollar fee, and the second was that the school would be cracking down on students parking illegally. With the intense construction the school is under, one of the teacher and staff parking lots is unavailable.
This has made the other lot reserved for teachers intensely overcrowded. With the demand for teacher parking already so high, students parking in the wrong lot is even more problematic. Due to this development, the school will be much stricter about student parking. If a car is found in the teacher parking lot without the special teacher sticker, the student will either have to immediately move it or be towed. That also applies to the bus and fire lanes.
In regards to parking passes, every student who parks at West High needs to register their car with a 2023-2024 parking pass. Passes from previous years are no longer valid and won’t be counted if they’re displayed. The reasoning behind the parking passes is mostly for accountability when it comes to accidents and irresponsible behavior in the lots.
“I think the number one worst part for me as an administrator is when a kid comes in and says I got hit by this car, and they give us a license plate, but it’s not registered and so we can’t help,” Assistant Principal Jenny Eustice said. In order to ensure that all students’ cars are connected to their name, parking passes are being more strictly enforced this school year.
The school is giving students a lot of time to get around to registering for a parking pass. To get a pass, students should go to the main office and fill out the short form. In a few weeks, the school will begin checking the lots for unregistered cars. In these checks, warnings will be left on cars, and license plates will be recorded. If there are students who still hold out from registering their cars, the school is willing to implement fines.
“We can implement fines but we really don’t want to,” Eustice said. The administration is hopeful that all students will comply with these new expectations and that serious measures like fines or towing will be altogether avoided.