Administration abandons plan for reserved parking spots for students
Underestimation of the number student drivers conflicts with new reserved parking policy
August 4, 2015
A new plan to assign parking spots to students for the 2015-2016 school year has been abandoned by the school after administrators miscalculated the demand for the 660 spots available to students.
The new parking policy was introduced to students over the summer, with the goal to create a safer and more efficient parking lot through the use of assigned parking spaces, selected by students, to be used all year. Selection began Tuesday, Aug. 4 with the seniors, many of whom waited in line for over an hour to select their favorite spot.
The school parking lot consists of 660 parking spots total, with 135 set aside for staff and visitors. Over 290 of the 320 seniors showed up to claim their spots, which left the juniors, sophomores and freshmen with under 240 spaces to share.
After reviewing those numbers, resource officer Maurice Loridon, associate principals Leah Vomhof and Marilyn Chrisler, and principal Tobie Waldeck met in the afternoon of Aug. 4 and came to the decision to change parking back to the original first-come, first-serve procedure.
The decision, although necessary according to Chrisler and Loridon, was not an easy one.
“When [the administration and I] started counting parking spaces after lunch, we started seeing that the math wasn’t going to add up,” Loridon said. ”We weren’t going to have enough parking for anyone, except for the seniors and some of the juniors. There were just not enough spaces left.”
Chrisler said the administration’s concerns for creating a fair policy is what drove them to make the decision.
“[The administration is] disappointed. We were working hard on trying to make it an easy transition, and it just didn’t happen,” Chrisler said. “We didn’t want to just pull the plug on the entire plan.”
The first student in line to pick out her space was senior Olivia Reyes, who camped out in the parking lot with her friends, seniors Merrick Vinke, Abbie Hughes and Emily Mason, the night before to get their ideal parking spaces. According to Reyes, the decision didn’t come as a shock.
“I was somewhat annoyed when they decided to not go through with [assigned parking spots], but I wasn’t surprised,” Reyes said. “[The process] didn’t seem completely organized or thought through enough.”
Although many students weren’t surprised by the decision, not all of the students shared Reyes’s frustrations. Sophomore Victoria Wesp thought the decision was a wise one.
“I wasn’t really surprised that it didn’t work because of how many people we have at Mill Valley,” Wesp said. “But I was kind of happy that I didn’t have to worry about getting a spot, and I didn’t think it wasn’t going to make our parking lot any easier.”
Overall, many seniors felt frustrations at the change of plans, but did not view the time they spent in line with fellow seniors as a waste of time.
“I was just as disappointed as everyone else, [but] I don’t think camping out was a waste of time at all,” Reyes said. “It was so much fun and we made a lot of good memories. I would definitely do it again.”
The selection times previously posted for junior, sophomore and freshmen parking spaces are now cancelled, but students are still able to enroll and pick up yearbooks at the posted dates and times. Loridon asks students to use the parking tag from the 2014-15 school year or the tag issued to seniors on Aug. 4 as a form of identification on their vehicles upon their return to school.
