Credit: Ainsley Jay

A Wayland High School parking pass is pictured above. Parking passes are required for all students who park in the high school parking lot. Passes can be picked up at the front office, after the student fills out the proper registration and pays the correct amount of money.

At the beginning of semester two, Wayland High School administration searched the student parking lot, marking cars that didn’t have a parking pass. Students who drive to school were to register and pay for parking passes at the beginning of the school year, or as soon as they began driving to school. Administration marked down the cars that lacked proper registration and called the owners of such cars to the front office.

“We could [figure out which cars were not registered] by looking through our system, in collaboration with the police and or our own systems because some of the kids who didn’t register their cars [this year] registered them last year,” WHS Vice Principal Laura Cole said. “So we were able to look up whose car it was, and then we started calling down kids [to say], ‘You have to register your car here on campus.’”

Parking passes cost $220. The cost to pay for a pass decreases as the school year goes on, and the collected fees help to pay for snow removal and to maintain the parking lot.

“I think a lot of people don’t get to [paying for a parking pass] for a while,” junior Colin McHugh said. “I think it’s important for people to [get their parking pass]. There needs to be some sort of regulation about who’s parking [and] where people are parking.”

According to WHS Principal Allyson Mizoguchi and Cole, registering cars ensures a safer campus. Registered cars allow administrators to keep track of which and how many students are at school and alerts them to unwanted people on campus.

“[There are] some students [who] are paying and some students [who] aren’t,” Mizoguchi said. “We totally get that sometimes kids have to drive a different car to school or sometimes they’re catching a ride with [someone else]. There’s flexibility, but there’s a need for us to know who’s on campus and to have predictability and clarity of who is and who’s not [on campus].”

WHS’ attendance secretary Liz Doyle keeps track of parking passes. She estimates about 20 students still have to pay for a parking pass this year.

“Most students are so excited to get their license that they come in and [say], ‘I get to drive to school,’” Doyle said. “There’s been a handful [of students] this year that we’ve had to track down and remind, ‘Oh, you do need to pay for parking.’”

Finally, when accidents occur in the parking lot, administrators can figure out which cars were responsible for the situation by looking through the registration of cars that park in the parking lot.

“We want to work with kids to get their cars registered here on campus because it’s actually a safety concern,” Cole said. “We need to know who’s in our parking lots.”