DISCIPLINE: Assistant Principal Brian Frost describes the use of invalid parking permits at Poly High School and explains the actions taken to address this issue.
By Birdy Jones, Staff Writer
For years, licensed Poly High School drivers have purchased parking passes and utilized the student parking lot. Seniors have first priority in receiving parking permits, followed by the juniors. This system worked smoothly for years up until February of 2014 when issues were brought to the administration’s attention.
Frost remembers that sometime in February the administration began to receive several complaints from valid parking pass holders, who claimed that there were not enough parking spaces due to several students using invalid parking passes. After investigating these reports, the administration coordinated with Riverside Police Parking Enforcement to issue both warnings and/or citations in the student lot. Campus supervisors started placing warnings on cars without valid passes daily for two weeks and made warning announcements throughout the week leading up to Parking Enforcement coming to Poly. In order to check the parking lot, a campus supervisor used a roster of valid parking permits and discovered that there were several duplicates. The administration then called the students with duplicate permits to the office and issued consequences. Frost stated, “I cannot comment on the specifics of the discipline issued to students, but the infractions ranged from distribution of forged passes to allowing other students to use their passes.”
Poly student and previous owner of an invalid parking permit, Malik Alexander (10), explains why he used an invalid permit: “I had a fake permit for about six months because I myself have no other option but to drive myself to school, and in order to attend and be on time, I needed a parking permit.” In his opinion, the number of available parking spaces compared to the number of students that need to drive themselves to school is unbalanced. Despite his honest explanation to the administration, Alexander was forced to choose between attending a two-day stay at Lincoln through the Stop program and a two-day suspension; he chose the suspension.
Frost mentioned that the Poly parking lot supports 10 percent of its student population and admits that the new construction did reduce the number of spaces available. “I don’t know how many spaces were lost due to the new construction, but the new design had to address concerns about traffic safety in the parking lot.”
Despite the loss of space, it is clear that invalid parking permits will no longer be tolerated. In fact, proposals have been made in an attempt to eliminate the temptation of duplicating passes next year. The first proposal is to paint a number on each parking space and issue a parking pass that matches that space number. “This would make it easy to verify parking daily, and there would be no point in making duplicate passes since each pass would be for one space,” Frost continued, “And if anyone parks in someone else’s assigned space, we’ll know about it immediately.” The proposal includes issuing passes on a first-come, first-served basis: seniors first, followed by juniors. Another proposal addresses parking as a privilege and requires a minimum number of credits and/or GPA to get a parking pass. “Administration will explore these proposals in depth and welcome additional suggestions,” Frost stated.