Finn Berry

At the end of the school day Oct. 2. Everyone rushes out of the parking lot to get out of there as fast as they can.

Following the start of this school year, there have been some changes to the highschool student parking lot which are causing frustration with the parking lot at Park. The navigation around Park’s parking lot has made it difficult to enter and exit the lot.

According to senior Henry Salita, exiting the lot after school is time consuming due to backup in the parking lot.

“Depending on where I am in the parking lot and if there is a traffic jam, it can take me up to 10 minutes to leave the school parking lot,” Salita said.

Junior Jake Iverson said that it can also take up to 10 minutes on one of the more backed up days. 

“On a good day around 5 minutes (to get out) and then on a bad day around 10 minutes,” Iverson said. 

In order to park in the on-campus parking lot, students have to buy a parking pass for their cars. Salita said it can be difficult to obtain a parking pass due to their price.

 ”There are probably kids who can’t afford that so I’m sure that there’s a better system or way for people to obtain a parking pass that’s not 100 dollars,” Salita said.

One of the new things the principal and assistant principal have implemented this year is closing a few of the exits .

Assistant principal Alyssa Gardner says the flow of cars is slowed down to keep the students safe.

 “Flows around safety and how students are operating their vehicles is important to us so it stays as a safe environment,” Gardner said.

According to Iverson, opening a second exit to make the car flow more effective could be a good solution.

“I would just make a second exit. The reason everybody takes too long is because everybody’s got to go out one exit,” said Iverson. “So there’s obviously going to be a line because it goes on the street. There’s lots of people driving at school, but I don’t mind personally.”

Gardner said the reason for the new sticker passes instead of the previous hanging passes is to make sure that they track their students correctly.

 “We just set it up in a way where it’s a lot easier for us to have data on who the cars are registered to and who has the permits,” Gardner said.