The parking pass system is used daily by students at MHS every day, and with this system comes specific uses for both the passes, and proceeds.

Parking passes are mandatory in being able to park inside of the school’s parking lot, but where do the proceeds of these parking passes go, why are they used, and what are the proceeds being used for?

According to Laila Discenza, Assistant Principal for Curriculum and Staff Development, students pay for parking passes because “parking passes help give [the school] some data about how many students are driving to school.”

Discenza said that there are various uses of this collected data, such as if the parking lot is large enough to hold all the students driving to school. She said, “There’s so many kids, we wouldn’t even know unless we had the pass.”

After this data is collected, the school can then work on making the parking lot suitable for all the students through renovations and changes in parking.

Another reason for parking passes is so there’s a record of where students are. Discenza said, “In case something happens, in case there was a lock down or anything necessary, what we do is we go back into the bin that [students] fill out and then it tells us what kind of car you have, what your license plate number is, so that we can know, is that student still here on campus if we were looking for you.”

The passes have obvious benefits to the school, but some might ask why students should have to pay when the data could be collected freely, and how is the money used?

Discenza said, “The money then actually goes into anything into the school, it’s not a specific fund, it goes into the school improvement general fund, so that we can use the money how we see fit around the high school.”

An example of something that could be funded by the proceeds of parking passes could be renovations in the school, as well as in the parking lots, such as tarring and rearranging the parking lot to suit students parking needs.

Junior Olivia Ferrito is a parking pass owner who’s pretty happy with how the proceeds for parking passes are used. Ferrito said, “The parking lot and the school is in pretty good condition, and if spending  $40 on a parking pass helps keep the school in good shape, then I’m happy with that.”

Something that is usually associated with the use of parking passes is the repercussion of not paying for a parking pass.

At MHS, there are consequences for not paying for a parking pass, but they’re not what some might assume.

Discenza talked on the consequences of not having a pass. She said, “It’s not like we call the police on you and you get a ticket that would go on your record. What would happen is you would get a ticket that is written by Officer Stuart Golicz, and it just says please stop down and see us. So it’s nothing going on your record, it just says hey we know you don’t have a one, you need to have one to park here.”

Discenza said, “Every couple of weeks we try to go out [to the parking lot] to make sure everyone has their passes.”

Junior Alexa Pasquale has also paid for a parking pass and said, “It’s not worth not having a parking pass because they check the parking lots.”

The school also works with certain students in their requirements for parking passes. Discenza gave the example for students who go to the PSEO program who may not be at school the whole day; these students may only pay half the price to park half the day.

Administrative secretary Renee Wetzel said, “It’s forty dollars for a parking pass, and then students that are just here [at the high school] for a half day, like post secondary students, are just required to pay twenty dollars.”

In cases of students who may only spend one to two periods at the school, they may also be allowed to park for free without a pass because of the short amount of time spent parked in the parking lot, so there are arrangements made to suit the various students attending the high school.

The parking pass system is in use for a specific reason. The proceeds and uses are all planned by the school administrators, and as long as the school is running, so will the parking pass system.