The 2021 senior class were the last Upper Arlington students allowed to leave school for lunch without permission or being signed out by a guardian. As students graduated from the old high school, the policy slowly phased out, grade by grade, until all of the students who were once familiar with that policy graduated. Now, as conflicts over senior spots grow, could the 2025 senior class be the UA students to experience senior parking?
Throughout the years of high school, most students do not get to experience the luxury of a senior parking spot until their final year of high school. Alicia McGinty, Designing with Materials teacher and the Administrator for Class Officers at UAHS, has defended the hierarchy of school parking spots and explained the process behind the senior parking lot.
“Depending on how many kids apply out of those seniors… we’ll be able to get anybody who’s a senior who needs one a spot.” But, as UAHS has almost 2000 students, each grade nearing 500 students, there are more students than there are parking spots.
“I think this year, we had about… 320 spots,” McGinty stated.
Consequently, with more seniors than there are spots, the assigning of spots gets left up to chance.
“It’s a lottery… If we have more [students] than the amount of spots that apply, then it will go into a lottery system and it will just draw randomly from there,” McGinty said.
Even though there are plenty of students to fill the spots, several spots are left empty each day. As a result, community members have started getting frustrated with the management of the lots.
UAHS Principal, Andrew Theado, discussed the conflicts caused by the senior lot that has affected both students and UA residents.
“While parking is limited, not all of our spots are always parked in,” Theado said, “So [UAHS is] getting a lot of complaints from our neighbors, because people are parked in the neighborhoods, and our parking lot is empty.”
Because the conflicts behind priority parking for seniors have started to affect those outside of UAHS, the administration has begun to dig deeper into what they can do to resolve the issues.
“[UAHS] had a parking study done to kind of determine, you know, when is [the senior lot] empty, when is it full,” Theado said.
This study is conducted by the city of UA’s operations department, in charge of the district’s facility and operational needs.
“They use some drones to look at certain times of the day, like, how many spots are open… Then they give us some recommendations on what to do,” Theado stated.
The discussion around the senior parking lot has infiltrated many parts of the community. Shortly after the conversation surfaced it made its way into UAHS class officer meetings in order to hear feedback from student class representatives.
Junior Class Officer, Gino Prati, has acted as a representative voice for the junior class by attending administrative meetings discussing senior parking.
“We talk with the administrators about what they’re planning on doing and what the students want,” Prati said.
Because Prati has been able to attend events focused on the future of UAHS parking rules, he has heard both sides of the story. As a result, the idea that senior parking will be removed completely has also made its way into conversations.
“They’re surveying, and then next year, it might be first-come first-serve parking,” Prati said. “Though there’s really no reason for the administration to take it away.”
The privilege of priority parking for seniors being threatened has caused an argument among students.
“It’d be awful if you open the spots for all the grades. Especially for the juniors right now, because we had to go through parking far away, and next year, if it was open to sophomores, juniors and seniors, that would just be awful,” Prati stated.
Despite the process and function of the senior parking lot being under scrutiny, Theado will always advocate for seniors to have priority parking.
“We will have senior parking, and we’ll work together on what that might look like. I think opening it up for just parking to anybody will cause more issues than it will solve,” Theado said.
Senior parking will continue to be improved and evolve as UAHS administration will continue to advocate for what is best for their students.
