Opinion by Garrett Welch

Students and visitors face problems with parking during school and at sporting events held in the Mount Vernon High School gym. Problems vary from no parking spots in the parking lots to cars being backed up all the way to Highway 30. The solution to this problem isn’t easy but the issue needs to be resolved in the concern of students and their safety.

At the beginning of the school year the parking is fairly moderate and easy to maneuver with. But as it gets deeper into the school year, parking becomes a real issue. Younger students begin to get their license and start driving to school. This causes a huge clutter which fills both the west and east parking lots, backing up students’ cars all the way up to Palisades Road every morning. It makes it much harder for visitors and students who don’t have a first period to find a place to park. Students who have to park outside the parking lot are at a big disadvantage. They have to walk twice as far as students that would park in the lots and it also puts them more at risk to be in an accident because they are parking along a busy road. Students would be parking where cars are going both ways on a road that already has one of the two narrow lanes filled by parked cars. This also causes more traffic because drivers have to be even more cautious and careful to avoid students and cars trying to park.

The same dilemma arises during J-term.When no students have early bird classes, school starts at 8:15 for everyone, making traffic more congested. Cars will back up onto Highway 30 in some situations. It’s even worse for the parents who already dropped their kids off and are trying to leave the complex of schools because parents can only exit through one road by the high school, making parents and students late. On multiple occasions students would show up late to class because of the held up traffic right in front of the school. Some teachers would even wait a couple extra minutes to start class because of the congestion of cars.

Parking congestion is also a problem during volleyball and basketball season. Cars fill any spot they can take, packing the roads in front of the school. It gets so bad that some parents and students have to park at the middle school. This can sometimes cause a jam in the middle school roads because cars end up parking on both sides of the road leaving barely enough room for one car on a two way street. It makes it almost impossible for cars to turn around if there’s a car oncoming or the gate to the middle school parking lot is closed, as it is daily until 4 p.m..

Parking shouldn’t be a difficult thing. It also shouldn’t be putting students at risk of getting injured. With a bigger parking lot and an improved network of roads all of these parking issues could be solved.