With almost 3000 students at Lake Mary high and nearly 800 parking spots it seems that we have a situation, a real situation. Every year we hear our school administration tell us “no parking pass= a towed car” and that is absolutely  fair when you have students paying $70 and not having a place to park and others taking parking spots for free. As a driver it’s pretty irritating when I get to school and there are no parking spots available, but even more irritating when I check who is parked in my usual spot and is a car WITHOUT a parking decal…

Past years the main issue has been students not wanting to pay for a decal, but this year that’s not the problem. The issue is that students are willing to pay, but the school administration is not willing to sell any more parking passes. Some students have taken extreme measures to get a parking pass such as calling the superintendent and others that don’t have those kind of connections are being placed in a “wait list” and are unable to drive to school without having their car towed. Senior Tanner Eaves said “My car was towed because I didn’t have a pass, but the school wont let me buy one and I’m number six on the waiting list” Many students like Tanner need a parking pass due to sport practices after school, clubs, tutoring, or simply because their parents work and driving themselves is the only way to get to school and home, so why is it that the school is not willing to sell any passes?

Every year Lake Mary receives more and more students due to over population in other schools, car lines get longer and parking spots become limited, but despite the fact that the number of students has greatly increased the space available for students to park has remained the same as 35 year ago! Some students became tired of the school’s administration not doing anything about this issue and took the problem into their own hands. Junior Ashlyn Jarvis tried to buy one for days and tired of waiting she created a replica of the sticker and put it on her windshield. Ashlyn finally got a real parking pass but the idea was pretty clever. On a more strategic way, Mr. Fratrik, Economics teacher, suggest that the price of the parking passes should be $100, therefore less students would be willing to buy a pass and there would be enough passes for the people that are willing to buy it at that price,although that could help the situation it would mean taking away the parking privilege to students that can’t pay $100. So then what else could be done? Personally I think the school should invest in constructing a bigger parking lot, I mean if we spent $780,000 in a football field I think building a larger parking lot would benefit the increasingly large population of driving students.