There is a single road in the entirety of the neighborhood that surrounds the Newton North high school on which students are allowed to park and have the certainty that they will not get a ticket nor have to move their car throughout the day. This one road has at most 30- 35 parking spots and if you are not at school roughly 10-15 minutes before the day begins it is almost a guarantee you will not find a spot. This road is only available to those who were fast or lucky enough to receive a hull pass during the summer. For those who did not receive a hull spot, they are forced to either risk parking in one of 3 teacher parking lots that have never once been full and gamble over their car being towed without warning, or parking on any of the streets that surround Newton North which hold a 2-hour parking restriction. A 2-hour parking restriction on the streets surrounding a high school that is only implemented during the exact hours of the school day is almost laughable. Anyone who is not a high school student that would need to park in any of these spots is either at their jobs during these hours or working from home, with their vehicles in their driveways. In addition, the fact that it is 2-hour parking is absurd, as school starts at 9 AM and the earliest lunchtime for juniors and seniors is 12:30-45, it is impossible not to get a ticket if you are parked at any of these spots. As I have been a student of the Newton Public Schools system since kindergarten, I have learned to appreciate the importance of free education regardless of wealth or status. However, for the possibly hundreds of students who drive to school every day and don’t scramble in the mornings to get one of only 30 legal parking spots, they will most likely have to pay a 15 dollar ticket. Though it is not paying the school, the principle still stands, we are paying 15 dollars a day for public education, the education I was taught to be free. The fact that the parking restrictions are 2-hour segments only during school hours, means the city of Newton recognizes this and chooses to benefit off of us instead of helping. We are quite literally the future of this country, but how can I pay attention to learning the anatomy of the human brain or how to calculate the derivative of a complex equation when I am staring at the clock hoping to be able to make it to my car before I get a ticket. There is also the factor that during those times where I have the ability to move my car to prevent getting a ticket, like lunch, I may not want to because it is almost guaranteed someone else will take my spot, or I just want to have lunch in the cafeteria with my friends. I apologize for being mad, but as the entirety of my grade is now saving money for college, the last thing we want to be spending our money on is a 15 dollar parking ticket. We just want the assurance that we will be able to go to the school we have loved and hated for the past almost 4 years, for free. Of course, I recognize that even if my voice receives traction, the process may not even make a change until after my grade graduates, but this is something that we cannot stand nor something we can tolerate any longer. I along with hundreds of other students will not pay for public school.