This year, with fewer students on campus on any given day, WHS students experienced unexpected benefits in the parking lot including both less traffic and trouble finding a parking spot. When WHS goes all-in on April 27, students have some concerns regarding the parking lot and traffic to and from the high school.

Currently, with Cohort A and Cohort B attending school on different days, the biggest problem is simply the traffic.

“There are a lot more cars coming into the school with no buses this year,” sophomore Zachary Grossman said. “Traffic can be backed up all the way to Maiden Lane for people trying to get into WHS.”

The use of buses, other than a few exceptions, will not be returning until the fall of 2021. Junior Will Ruland has noticed that with no buses, the student pick-up line is much longer, making his exit from the school slower.

“[The biggest problem I see is] leaving the school with the massive line of parents picking up students who cannot drive,” Ruland said.

Some parents who want to avoid the long pick-up or drop-off line choose to drop their student(s) off in the parking lot, an issue that senior Darcy Foreman noticed.

“Parents picking up students from the senior lot instead of the pickup line congests traffic,” Foreman said.

Once WHS returns to all-in school, the number of cars in the student parking lots will double. To control the parking lot and make it possible for all students to park, there are designated blue parking spots for seniors and white parking spots for juniors and sophomores. This year, some juniors have parked in the open senior spots.

“[The school should] let juniors know they can only park in white spots,” Foreman said.

Adding on to the issue of more cars in the parking lots, freshman Zackary Goldstein notes that students may be less adamant to carpool because of COVID-19. Although busing will not be of use until the fall, WHS students have many suggestions for how to make coming and leaving WHS efficient and safe.

“Maybe allowing freshmen and sophomores to leave school early if they can [would help],” junior Jason Luc said.

Multiple students seconded the idea of staggered drop-off and pick-up times, including freshman Eleanor Brogan.

“Maybe having drop-off rounds, for example, if you are [in] Cohort A you get dropped off [ten] minutes before Cohort B [could help],” Brogan said.

Another suggestion that WHS students have to minimize traffic is the utilization of the loop closest to the buildings for either drop-off, pick-up or both.

“[We could] start to use the small loop in front of the school again to alleviate traffic,” senior Kazi Ahmed said.

Although this may seem like a small problem in the grand scheme of going all-in, students are concerned because they don’t want to have to wake up earlier and are worried about getting to any after-school commitments on time.

“It will be chaos,” Ruland said.