The Edina High School parking lot has always been crazy. The school charges quite a bit of money for a parking permit in order to encourage carpools, and for this semester, the majority of passes were only given to carpools, PSEO and zero hour students because the school ran out of passes. I am one of the single driver students affected by this change.

While I understand that there are two thousand students at the school and only four hundred parking spots, I think it is unfair to give sophomore drivers permits over senior drivers just because they have a carpool.

I moved to a new condo in a different part of Edina this fall, and I don’t know anyone who lives near me. In order to get to a friend’s house, I have to drive at least ten minutes. I’m not on anyone’s way to school either, so forming a carpool is implausible for me. I got a parking pass in the fall and scheduled my year around the independence I have with my car. As a captain of Model UN and an active member of the orchestra, I need to have a flexible schedule to come in before school and stay after in order to fulfill my commitments that I made in September when I had a parking pass.

I took zero hours both my sophomore and junior year with the goal of finishing up some extra classes so that I could have the freedom to make my senior year schedule as flexible as possible. Because of this, I get to TA sixth hour and leave school early many days. This has allowed me to get a nannying job and make money for different expenses in my life. It’s ridiculous that after working hard for two years so that I could have this freedom, I’m not allowed to park in the parking lot just because I can’t be part of a carpool.

While I don’t have an official zero hour, I’m in at 7:30 a.m. at least two days a week fulfilling commitments I made in September. Having a senior student, my parents were hoping to continue to increase my independence, not my dependence. And if I can’t get to school early for a meeting or an orchestra practice, I’m letting a lot of people down.

While the school offers a small number of daily passes, they’re meant for students who need to get to a doctors appointment, not for students who really should have semester long passes but didn’t get one. If I were somehow able to get daily passes, I’d pay almost twice as much as I would for a normal parking pass in the end.

I think there are two different stages of solutions that need to be made in order to help solve this problem. I think right now EHS needs to talk to the school district and school board about reforming the system. They should give preference to seniors, followed by PSEO and zero hour students, then juniors, and finally sophomores.

No offense, sophomores, but you’re new drivers and the high school parking lot is not a safe place for inexperienced drivers to be. I’ve gone to EHS for three years and gained seniority during my time here, and it’s unfair if I don’t get to use that seniority that I’ve worked towards. There’s no reason that any senior in high school should be having their parents haul them to and from school while a group of sophomores are driving.

While carpools are a great idea, they simply aren’t a possibility for all students, and there’s no reason that any seniors should be penalized for that.

I’ve had a great experience at EHS thus far, and I was very much looking forward to a final semester where I got to practice using the independence I worked hard for two years to gain and will be using next year at college. Instead, just because I can’t be part of a carpool, I can’t park at school.