The number of students continues to grow at Pleasant Valley High School every year. However, there is only a fixed number of parking spaces. With a total of 1643 students and only 777 parking spaces, which students are able to park and where?
Each class gets bigger as the years go; however, the room for expansion is minimal. There has been a concern for the Pleasant Valley High School in previous years and will continue to be in the future. There have been a few possible solutions to solve this pressing problem. “In the short term what might happen is administration might have to continue to further restrict the number of kids who get parking passes,” says Deputy Officer Jamey Fah. Fortunately, this will occur in a couple of years and will not be in effect in the near future.
At the end of last year, freshmen had trouble getting a close parking space to the school, “I had to park at Scott for some of it [the school year],“ says sophomore Gavin Kettmann. When E lot was filled, many freshmen were forced to park at the Scott Community parking lot.
Unfortunately, the amount of parking spaces in the south side of the school will lessen next year due to construction on the building. With this construction, teachers will be forced to park elsewhere. “Something that is currently student parking in the short-term will become staff-only parking,” says Fah. The expansion on the south side of the school will call for more teachers in the years to come and possibly a bigger teacher parking lot.
Class sizes will rise and the school will be faced with options to expand. In the future the school district may need to be “buying new real estate or putting up a new parking lot or paving over something that is not [a] parking lot,” Fah states. The district may run into trouble considering the space restriction of surrounding neighborhoods and Scott Community College.
Options about expansion are already being explored this school year. Approximately 60 parking spaces were added to E lot as of Sept. 14, 2023, further showing the urgency for new parking spots. Should the district add new parking spots in an already cramped space, or will Pleasant Valley grow out of the old campus it consistently reconstructs?
Alex Berte • Mar 21, 2024 at 9:21 am
Yes we need more spots whoever decided to offer so many passes to sophomores should not be in charge or parking anymore.