Although the juniors have been threatened with loss of senior parking privileges by the principal, some juniors continue to drive to school.

When thinking about entering junior year, what most kids anticipate is being able to drive to school.

However, this year, when students started driving and parking in the elementary school parking lot, a security guard was there preventing them from doing so which forced juniors to either drive back home to have a parent take them. Others tried to find a legal spot for the time being which is very limited in town, due to the lack of spots available in Westhampton Beach.

An anonymous junior, who now drives to school and parks in a legal spot, said, “It’s just created a huge inconvenience, that I think could have been avoided. I think the administration could have tried to accommodate us a little better.”

A lot of juniors with full licenses are confused as to why they can’t park in the empty school parking lot across the street from the school, the Hite lot, while it remains empty all day. Most people are aware that the school initially said that they can’t have juniors with junior licenses driving to school illegally and allow them to park in their parking, which is reasonable.

However, a solution to this would be creating parking passes for juniors similar to the ones for seniors in the high school parking lot. This would eliminate the controversy over junior licensed drivers driving to school.

When this ideas was proposed to Assistant Principal Mr. Bookamer, he stated, “It’s a safety issue. It’s not safe for students to be walking across two streets in the morning to get to the school.”

Yet the school is aware that students are parking off of school grounds in legal spots and crossing more streets to get to school.

The reason this is permitted is because the school is no longer liable if something happens.

Mr. Bookamer explained that another reason they can’t have high school students parking in the elementary school lot is because the elementary school students don’t get dismissed until 3:05, while the high schoolers get out at 2:20. The school can’t have older kids in the parking lot while school is in session, again due to safety issues.

When meeting with juniors and asking them how they feel about this rule being implemented this year, many seem to agree on their responses. An anonymous junior stated, “The school seems to be taking away our privileges as a punishment, which doesn’t seem fair considering we didn’t do anything wrong.”

Between lunch not being allowed to be delivered to the school anymore and now juniors not being able to drive to school, many juniors fear that their privilege of leaving for lunch next year will be cut as well. Something that most students look forward to.

Juniors explain that even though they don’t fully agree with the rules that have been implemented, they understand where the administration is coming from.