For students of Park Hill High School who drive to school, the parking lot is a very confusing place. There are certain specific areas of each parking lot designated for staff. There are two main parking lots that can be used by students: the Southeast lot and the Northwest lot.

The Southeast parking lot is the most spacious parking lot designated for students, but is inconveniently located in the very back of the school. Students who park here often end up walking very far to get to the school from their car in the morning, especially when their first class is on the very opposite side of the school. In addition to this inconvenience, the Southeast parking lot is very overcrowded with staff parking in student spaces as well as students who don’t have a parking pass. This causes a lot of traffic at the end of the school day when students are trying to exit the parking lot but end up waiting 15 minutes to even get out of the parking lot because of the immense traffic.

Nevertheless, the Southeast lot has signs and painted parking spaces that designate the border between staff parking and student parking. This is not quite the case in the Northwest parking lot, however. Up in the Northwest lot, there isn’t a lot of space for student parking. This is the closest lot to the school, so it’s a very popular parking lot for both students and staff. However, there seems to be more staff parking than student parking.

There is a restricted parking lot to the west of the Northwest lot. This lot is bordered by a median as well as a sign to indicate that the lot is staff parking only. Usually, students see this sign and understand that they can’t park there. This is because as a society, we recognize “staff parking only,” signs and understand that if we are not staff, we cannot park there. But without those signs, people often forget which areas are designated for a specific group of people, such as with staff parking. 

Staff parking becomes complicated when spaces of student lots become “staff parking,” without signs or indications that they are for a different person. The students were told over the announcements about the staff parking at the edge of the Northwest parking lot bordering Barry Road, but we were not informed of the specifics or even where to find that information.

Personally, I have received two parking tickets in the past month alone from the school for accidentally parking in the “staff parking.” However, these parking spaces were not labeled as such. Because there is no indicator of where the staff parking spaces are, I am unsure of where I can safely park without getting a ticket. I’m sure I am not alone in this frustrating grievance. 

I feel that if the students can see which parts of the parking lot are staff, they will not get tickets as frequently. Since each parking ticket is a $10 fine, it could be possible for the school to use the enormous amount of money collected from parking tickets to install staff parking signs. Once this petition reaches 2,000 people- which is the count of Park Hill’s student body- it will be sent to our principal, Dr. Brad Kincheloe for consideration. Thank you for supporting our students and the improvement of our school by signing this petition!