The congested flow of morning traffic and the haze of carbon dioxide being emitted from rusty Toyota Camrys and Honda Civics floods the school parking lots five days a week, as students who paid for student parking race to their spot during the morning rush, so they may make it to Kyle Duggan’s precalculus class in time for their test.
This is what the lucky lottery winners get to go through each morning. For the others, who didn’t win the parking lottery, life is a little more difficult. They must battle for a parking spot on the streets, and sometimes they cannot find one before class starts.
Liberty has had a parking lottery for years, and it’s worked well.
“At the beginning of the year, you have a week to do your paperwork, and that puts you in the lottery,” school Security Officer Jon Kinsley said. “We pick random names out of a stack, starting with seniors.”
The remaining spots, if any, go to juniors and then to sophomores. This year, however, there was no space for 12 juniors.
“If we don’t run out of spaces, we give some to the sophomores, but this year we weren’t able to do that,” Kinsley said.
Since there was no space left in the back lot for the 12 juniors who did not receive a spot, more parking spaces were needed, which the district provided by creating more spots. According to Kinsley, this was because there is a new portable being built in that parking lot, which takes up more spots; the absence of these spots caused the district to create more spots in the portable parking lot.
“Recently, we were able to add the juniors who applied that didn’t get their parking spots, since the district decided to let us do that this year,” Kinsley said. “We had less spaces this time, so that’s why the district was able to help us out and create more spots.”
Some sophomores who did not get a parking spot have wondered whether they will eventually have one. According to Kinsley, the remaining sophomores will not be getting parking spots.
“We only have so much space,” Kinsley said. “Once the spots are all used up, you’re out of luck.”
