Parking arrangements at high schools in Montgomery County have been a long-standing debate among seniors. At this school, the student lot is assigned by spot number at the start of each semester based on a first-come, first-served basis with a confirmed date and time to choose spots and pick up hang tags.

For those who failed to get in line for parking spots on time, this means a student will likely get a spot at the end of the lot, among the hardest to access and with the longest wait time to leave the lot. Due to the one-way merge style of parent pickup and student lanes, there is a consistent clog of traffic from the lot all the way down Wootton Parkway each day.

Opinions on the parking arrangement were recently brought back into attention, specifically due to the assignment of spots during the start of spring semester this year, when the hectic rush of seniors to the Commons at the end of the school day resulted in an unbridled mass of students, rather than the single-file line that was unrealistically expected by administration. Seniors questioned why their parking spot should be determined by who was able to get to the Commons fastest, who cut in line to get to the front and even if they had paid and submitted documents as early and on time as permitted.

There are students who seem in favor of the “free parking” style utilized by schools like Poolesville where spots change daily based on who gets to the school first, resulting in a system that may be unpreferable on some days, but that does not ultimately jeopardize one’s spot for months on end. With this system in place, the empty spots often present in the lot can be used by other students accordingly, resulting in a convenient entry and exit each day. While the assignment-based system provides a familiarity and order to parking, it results in unhappy students.

Either the parking spot assigning process should be conducted in a more orderly, equal-opportunity manner, or this school could provide free-choice parking on a daily basis that may give the students the equity they crave.