Gary Scott, the Director of Facilities and District Safety at EHS, sees challenges in the parking lot every year when the snow arrives.
“Students take many liberties with how they park,” Scott said. “Even though they have had several months or years of parking experience at EHS and CTE.”
Scott said he wonders why students don’t carpool more or take advantage of the free busing or public transportation. The facilities team starts to plow at 4:00 am on snow days, doing their best to clear the lots.
“As students are probably aware, we have had approximately $10 million in cuts to the EWSD budget over the past two years,” Scott said. “Most of those cuts came from the facilities budget. The EHS/CTE campus is at max capacity for impervious pavement. If we wanted to add more parking, we would need to remove something, like the track or the tennis courts.”
One issue with the parking lots is triple parking; it’s become a recurring issue when the lines aren’t visible, trapping
students and staff in their parking spots.
Emma Cappelluti and Matthew Mallory, both Juniors at EHS, have been “triple-parked.”
“I was leaving class to head to a school board meeting at a different school with my board associate,” Cappelluti said. “As I headed to my car, I realized I couldn’t leave the parking lot. I tried to find another ride, but I couldn’t, and everyone had already left, making me absent from an important meeting.”
Cappelluti said her worst experience in the parking lot is navigating the rows of parked cars so close together that it is nearly impossible to drive through them; however, she says triple parking is the more common occurrence.
“Parking in the winter is terrible,” Mallory said. “People have no idea how to drive. I went out to my car after flex, and I was stuck. I had a doctor’s appointment I needed to leave early for, and I had to miss it.”
Scott said that when made aware of the parking lot incidents, the facilities team attempts to contact students as quickly as possible in order to fix the problem.
Mr. Stapleton, a physics teacher at EHS, has a unique way of making sure he is between the lines when parking. He explained his parking strategy via email:
I go for the orange spot in Figure C [In the diagram to the right]. To get in the right general area, I visualize the dotted line between the rows of cars, which runs through the northernmost parking spot between A Lot and the horseshoe. If nobody is behind me, I get out and walk to where the two yellow lines converge. That’s where I want to be, sitting in the driver’s seat when I’m parked. I move along the East-ish/West-ish axis until I see the pole marked with red in Figure B lining up with the edge of the classroom window marked with blue. Then I move along the North-ish/South-ish axis until I see the tree marked with red in Figure A sitting between the sign and the far tree marked in blue. When both lines of sight look right, I make a mark in the snow, get back in the car, and maneuver the car so that the driver’s seat is over that spot in the snow. I confirm my lines of sight and then get out. I don’t worry about parking at exactly 57 degrees to the dotted line.
When Mr. Stapleton isn’t able to get there early enough to pick that spot, he makes sure to dig around the lines with his boots or scraper to find the white lines.
One student, who asked to remain anonymous, has been the cause of a “triple park”.
“I had 7/8 off, and there were no spots open,” the student said. “There were other triple parks, so I thought it wouldn’t be as bad, and I was leaving early. I didn’t want to be late for class and receive a callback, so I needed to rush, and so I just parked.”
As the winter continues, parking continues to be a problem for students, staff, and the facilities team. While the budget and other limitations make parking lot solutions difficult, awareness and common sense will help address the issue until different arrangements can be made.
“I think adding curbs, adding posts, something that people will hit their cars on and get consequences for their terrible parking,” Cappelluti said.
