By Ben Shapiro, Editor-in-Chief

Seniors may only park on campus four days a week this school year, the first time in five years and the second time in Conestoga High School’s history that school administration placed such a restriction.

Traditionally, seniors have enjoyed the privilege of on-campus parking five days a week. However, due to the size of the Class of 2024 — the Tredyffrin/Easttown School District’s largest class since 1980 at almost 700 students — there is not enough space in Conestoga’s parking lots to accommodate five-day-a-week parking for all seniors.

According to 12th grade assistant principal Dr. Patrick Boyle, who oversees Conestoga’s facilities, the size of the Class of 2024 is roughly 150 students larger than Conestoga’s average class. Because of this, if he allowed seniors to park all five days of the week, he would have had to deny parking permits to around 60 students — a scenario he wanted to avoid.

“I don’t want to deny kids parking. Now, it’s a privilege, not a right, but they look forward to it,” Boyle said. “I just thought that denying a large number of kids parking would be a lot worse than denying (all of them) one day of parking.”

The first and only previous time that Conestoga implemented a four-day-a-week parking restriction was during the 2018-19 school year. At the time, there were only 265 parking spots designated for student use, which could not accommodate the size of the senior class. In 2021, the school added a new south parking lot for teachers, which opened up 85 spots in the larger, main lot for students.

While the additional parking spots allowed more students to park on campus, they do not provide enough space for the current seniors. According to Boyle, 410 seniors requested a permit to park in one of the 350 parking spots available for student use.

“Before COVID, we had maybe 60-70% of students parking every day,” Boyle said. “Now, (more) students have access to cars because some of their parents are working from home. The number of students who park every day has risen.”

Now, Boyle estimates that around 80% of seniors park every day. He said that he used to oversell permits, but is unable to do so now because of the growing number of daily parkers.

Despite the new limitations, the cost of a parking permit has remained at $180, the same price that the school board set in 2010 when seniors could park five days a week.

For the past couple of years, TESD has made an annual income of roughly $63,000 from student parking permits. This year, that figure is expected to be around $83,000 due to the increased number of permits issued. The school board distributes all of the money collected from parking permits into the General Fund, the district’s primary account used to finance its day-to-day activities.

Deborah Ealer, a mother of two Conestoga graduates and one current Conestoga senior, feels that the $180 fee is “not moral” given that students cannot use the permit one day a week.

“Our costs are through the roof for parking,” Ealer said. “Why are we not reducing the fee when we’re reducing the services provided?”

How Conestoga enforces the parking schedule

In August, Boyle sent a survey to the senior class asking seniors to indicate their first and second choices for the day on which they would not be able to park — commonly referred to as a student’s “Do Not Drive Day.” According to Boyle, all but eight seniors received their first or second choice.

“I was worried about it being more because it would have been really upsetting to contact them,” Boyle said.

The color of a student’s parking permit indicates the day of the week on which they cannot park on campus. If a student is found parking on campus on their Do Not Drive Day or in the staff section of the parking lot, Conestoga’s Code of Conduct states that they will receive one Evening Supervised Study after school from 3-5 p.m. and a loss of all privileges for one week. On a student’s second offense, they will receive one Saturday Detention and a loss of privileges for 30 days.

According to Boyle, there have been several parking violations this year, both by seniors parking in the staff-only sections of the lots and on their Do Not Drive Day, as well as by juniors parking with permits from previous years. There have been no repeat violators as of yet.

Implications on off-campus student-athletes

For some students, the inability to park on campus five days a week makes the logistics of getting to and from school difficult. Some seniors carpool on their Do Not Drive Day. According to senior Kerry Harley, coordinating transportation can be difficult for those who have athletic obligations off campus.

Harley plays tennis in the fall and softball in the spring for Conestoga. As neither sport has an on-campus court or field, Harley must travel to her off-campus practice sites after school for the majority of the year.

“When I saw that parking might be four days, I was like, ‘Okay, this is going to be really difficult,’” Harley said. “Even before I thought about sports as a factor, I was like, ‘What am I supposed to do on that one extra day?’”

Harley said that while getting to practices and matches is no problem on the four days a week she can park, it is difficult for her on Tuesdays when she cannot park at school. She feels it is her obligation as a senior to provide rides to her younger teammates — something provided to her in past years by then-seniors.

On the days she cannot park, the underclassmen that she usually drives have to find alternative methods of transportation, a situation for which she feels responsible.

“In past years, when everyone would be able to park, there’d be enough seniors to make sure everyone got a ride, and parents wouldn’t really have to drive,” Harley said. “But, this year, underclassmen’s parents have to come to school, pick them up and drive them to matches.”

On Sept. 5, Conestoga began providing a shuttle to the Upper Main Line YMCA and Wilson Farm Park every day after school for members of the tennis and cross-country teams, respectively, to get to practice. They are the only fall school sports that practice off-campus.

However, according to Conestoga’s athletic director Kevin Pechin, the tennis team is not guaranteed busing to all away matches.

Some students can still park every day

According to Boyle, there are roughly 30 students who received special permission to park on campus five days a week. These students are primarily enrolled in special programs through the Chester County Intermediate Unit (CCIU).

Senior Sakura Chan is one of the handful of Conestoga seniors currently enrolled in the CCIU’s Allied Health program. She attends her first four classes of the day at Conestoga and then drives roughly 20 minutes to the CCIU’s Technical College High School (TCHS) Pickering Campus where she completes the remainder of her school day.

“Once I started hearing about (four-day-a-week parking), I got kind of worried about how I would get to class on that day I couldn’t park,” Chan said.

Chan’s worries were short-lived, as she soon learned that she would gain an exception to the four-day-a-week rule. Since one of the requirements for enrollment in one of the CCIU’s special programs is consistent individual transportation, Boyle administered special parking permits to the 30 students who requested them at the same $180 fee.

“It was really a relief,” Chan said. “It’s just one less thing to worry about.”

Senior Ray Hu is also enrolled in the Allied Health program. On top of Conestoga’s flat parking fee of $180, Allied Health students are required to pay for an additional parking permit at TCHS. However, Hu noticed a discrepancy between the costs of the two permits.

“$180 is a lot, and it kind of blows that we have to pay so much,” Hu said. “The application at TCHS is almost identical, but they only charge $15. There are some numbers at odds there.”

Conestoga’s parking fees are also greater than those of neighboring high schools. At Radnor High School, seniors pay $75 to park five days a week. At Great Valley High School, seniors pay $100

For some seniors, the fees and scheduling conflicts that come with four-day-a-week parking present a less-than-ideal situation.

“I get why the decision was made,” Harley said. “But, to finally be a senior and have that privilege of parking and not even get to experience it to its fullest kind of sucks.”

Ben Shapiro can be reached at [email protected].