When senior Danny Hunegs received his license this past week, he was doubtful he’d acquire a pass.

“Someone told me they were still selling the passes so I went in to just ask, I didn’t expect there would be any,” Hunegs said. “I went in and they did have them available which I was happy about, so I just filled out the info, paid and got a pass.”

Kirsten Christensen, administrative assistant to the assistant principals, said the new space for students to park allowed the school to offer more parking passes this year.

“The district offices moved out in June, so we had all the district spots become available for students because they were previously reserved for district employees,” Christensen said. “That’s why we were able to open it up and sell more (parking passes) to students.”

According to Christensen, the administration keeps additional spots open for possible absences of teachers, but this year it hasn’t been an issue.

“Because we had to leave spots for traveling teachers, we didn’t want to sell all of the spots. We ended up selling 30-40 additional spots,” Christensen said.

Hunegs said he thinks the higher availability of parking spots is beneficial for student drivers, especially as winter approaches.

“I think it’s better that there are more spots available. Even though 50 dollars is a lot for some students to pay, it’s still good that they don’t have to park so far away,” Hunegs said. “When it gets to be colder, it’s good to be closer to the school. I know I didn’t want to have park on the hill and deal with that,” Hunegs said.

Christensen said parking passes sell much slower first semester compared to second because of new sophomore drivers.

“I know second semester, typically sophomores get their driver’s license so there is another class that wants to park, which is why we sold out so fast,” Christensen said. “Right now we may be pretty close to where we were last year in first semester because we only have two classes to sell to.”

According to Christensen, the school has not reached its goal in terms of how many passes it wanted to sell this semester.  

“We haven’t even sold the total amount we did last year, we’ve sold I think 170, which means we’re down 13 from last year, and we have the additional 30-40 we need to sell on top of that,” Christensen said. “We continue selling parking passes until they sell out, so they are still open to students.”