Painted parking spots
Other schools allow seniors to paint their precious spots, why not ours?
STORY BY HARLEIGH MOORE
Cars drive into the parking lot and slowly pull into their regular spots. The time is quickly approaching 8 a.m. as students funnel into the building to prepare for the school day. There is no assigned parking in the senior or underclassmen parking lots at EHS. If there were to be assigned parking in the senior parking lot however, could there be a possibility of the seniors being able to paint their personal parking spot?
Bonner Springs High School is one nearby 4A school that has taken on the recently popularized activity of letting seniors paint their parking spots. The principal at Delaware Ridge Elementary School, Kristin Moulin, sponsored the event, along with parents that are apart of the Project Grad committee.
To earn the privilege of personalizing their parking spot, seniors at Bonner Springs High School must first enter into a raffle to receive a parking spot, since the school doesn’t have assigned parking. If a student’s name is selected, they have some choices to make. All front-row parking spots cost $50 while the others are $30.
Each student pays first, next, their name is dropped into a designated jar, based on which type of parking spot they requested. Once that student’s name is drawn out of the jar on the day parking spots are assigned, that student will be able to pick the parking spot that they want. All money raised from these parking spots goes towards an organization called Project Grad.
Project Grad is similar to Eudora’s After Prom, and provides a safe way for students to hang out after graduation. The painted parking spots give students the opportunity to do something they want while raising money for the program.
To finalize their parking spot, seniors must fill out an application with a completed sketch on what they want to put on their parking spot, and turn it into the office. It is then looked over by the Project Grad committee to see if it is approved. The application tells students certain rules and guidelines that must be followed during the process of submitting a design and painting the parking spot. This year, out of all the applications submitted, all were approved by the committee, except for one, which didn’t follow the guidelines.
As this is the first year Bonner Springs has let their seniors paint their own parking spots, they are really just playing it by ear. All that is known is that there has been nothing that has come out of the project that isn’t positive.
“The kids loved it and they took pride in it,” says Moulin.
Senior Reese Bacon, from Bonner Springs High School, says, “I’m just glad that I get to experience it and the classes below me get to experience it too.”
With the event being such a success this year, Project Grad is looking to sponsor it again in future years.
Seeing how other schools in the area are giving their students a way to express their creativity, some students here at Eudora High School wonder what is keeping us from doing the same? According to EHS Principal Ron Abel, one of the main reasons why Eudora doesn’t allow painted parking spots, is because no one has completed a proposal that has passed all of the policies that are in place.
According to Abel, the senior parking lot here at EHS doesn’t have any assigned parking and in order to have painted parking spots, each senior would have to have their own designated parking spot. A potential problem students have to keep in mind is that the students don’t always get the exact parking spot that they wanted.
Also, EHS students would have to be OK with the days that parts of the senior parking lot are blocked off for events going on during the school day. This would mean that the seniors that are assigned to the first few rows of the parking lot would have to park somewhere other than their special spot for that specific day.
Principal Abel explained that there would be a possibility of Eudora participating in painted senior parking spots, but a proposal would have to be made that would address the conflicts that might come up.
“It’s going to depend on the plan and how they address issues that would be concerns to what they are proposing,” said Abel.
When students around Eudora High School were asked about their thoughts on letting seniors paint their parking spots, most were for it. Senior Lydia Brown liked the idea.
“It would be something fun that only the senior class could take part in and it would be their own little thing,” Brown said.
Students usually want to express their creative side and many think that painting their own parking spot would be a fun way to do so.
“It adds to the school and the atmosphere and the creative outlets we want to show we have,” said Mallory Vickers, Soph.
The main concern among students is how long the paint would last on the parking spaces and if it would be difficult assigning parking spots to each individual.
“It’s a lot of work for people to get it on and off every year and it’s a mess assigning spots,” said Trevor Bohnenblust, Jr.
Nonetheless, it’s a trend that appears to be growing.
“I think it’s caught on to other people,” says Moulin, “A lot of schools want to do it and they think its fun its just kind of getting their [administration] to say: ‘Hey, it’s ok –we just have to have rules.’”
