It is 10:20 a.m. on Monday, Feb. 7, and Senior Mikayla Kresco is having trouble finding parking. She has a free second period and lives ten miles away from Oak Park High School, so walking is not an option. As she drives around the parking lot she realizes that all the spots are occupied, and the only thing left for her to do is parallel park by the tennis courts. Unfortunately for Kresco, this is a regular occurrence as parking has been overcrowded for weeks.

As she sets her car up to park, an OPHS campus supervisor in a golf cart pulls up to her and requests she move her car to another spot. The campus supervisor tells Kresco that it’s too tight for her to parallel park by the tennis courts, and there have been rumors in previous days of students fighting with other students over lack of space. 

Through all the commotion, the bell for class has rung and Kresco is officially late for fourth period on top of having nowhere to park. With time being of the essence and a complete lack of anywhere else to park, Kresco and one other senior student are forced to park in handicapped spots with permission from assistant principal, Jason Meskis 

“It was nice that they gave us a spot for the day, but I don’t think it’s right to take away handicap parking from people who need it,” Kresco said

The overcrowded parking lot didn’t seem to pose a notable issue until after students got back from winter break on Jan. 11. Suddenly it was the talk of many conversations, especially among the senior class. With many seniors enrolled in distance learning during their Junior year of high school, this was the first time they were able to use the school parking lot. 

“On the second week back I was running a bit late to school. Typically when I am late I can usually just park in the tennis courts and call it a day, but as I pulled into the parking lot at 8:28, I found myself doing laps upon laps around a full parking lot. I ultimately had to park across the street from Sophomore Circle despite having paid over $100 for a parking spot at school. When I got to class at 8:37, I found out that every upperclassman had the same problem regardless of whether they got here early or late. I shouldn’t have to pay for a permit that I can’t even use,” Senior Kimia Nuban said. 

Parking permits are $150 dollars and work on a first-come, first-served basis. On the parking permit form linked on the OPHS website, it states, “Due to very limited parking, permits are restricted for Juniors and Seniors only.” Despite this, Sophomores were given the opportunity to also purchase parking permits this year. Meskis believes this was a factor in the overcrowding of the parking lot, so Sophomore permits were recalled and refunded. 

“Last week we realized we had sold more passes than we had spots in the lot. The hard copy passes did not equal the number of parking spots and it looked like we had a lot of empty parking spaces because we had a lot of students out with the COVID surge. Typically we sell out parking with Seniors and Juniors, this is the first year we went to Sophomores so it made sense to collect their passes and give them a refund. All of the sophomore passes have been collected,” Meskis wrote to the Talon. 

Sophomore Hunter Glass bought his parking permit back in October and was angered that he got his permit taken away. 

“I was disappointed to find out admin was taking all of the Sophomore spaces after I paid the same amount as everyone else. It does not look like the very few passes they took away are making any difference. It’s only making the traffic worse as more students are parking on the streets,” Glass wrote to the Talon.

After this year, Meskis has plans to avoid overcrowded parking in the future. 

“In following years we will be careful to not sell more passes than we have spaces in the lot,” Meskis wrote.