For a long time, students and parents suggested The Columbus School add a parking lot for students, but the school was never able to find a solution. This year this topic came up again; parents reached out to the school’s administration after fines were charged to students who parked at Las Fresas and they were upset about the situation and wanted a change.

According to Juan Fernando Mesa, TCS Facilities Manager there are three primary concerns: safety, capacity, and equity. Obviously, no one wants accidents happening in school but there are plenty of solutions to prevent them.

“Regarding safety, when parents enter the school in their cars they are also putting everyone at risk so safety isn’t something only us students are responsible for,” Cipriano Uribe, Grade 11, said.

Safety should always be the most important consideration but, if the issue is putting kids at risk, there are multiple ways to make people aware of danger. Adding cones and signs will warn people there are cars in that area. And as Mesa emphasized, there are kids down in K4 and K5, but I don’t think kids at that age should be anywhere close to any parking lot, teachers should be on the lookout for them and advise them not to go near them.

Capacity is another concern for the school. Mesa explains how hard it would be to add a parking lot and how costly it can be. Around 20-25 cars park at Las Fresas, which isn’t an absurd amount of parking spots. I believe there’s plenty of space the school could repurpose for its use. For example, the soccer field close to the second entrance, it’s an area with a path of rocks making it easy to access and not too costly as constructing a new parking lot and entrance. That area could fit around 35 cars easily.

I will say there are students around that entrance and people walk through that path all day, but the ones who take that path are usually middle schoolers, high schoolers, and teachers, which all can be aware of a parking lot if the safety measures are applied. As I mentioned before, cones and signs should get the job done. I don’t believe capacity should prevent this idea from happening since it can be easily solved in many ways.

Finally, equity and keeping it fair among all students is another primary concern the school mentioned.
Creating permits could be the solution. By using permits, the school will be able to control how many people will park inside the school. People who are injured and cannot walk further distances, students who don’t have any other way of transportation, and whoever has a valid reason to park in school will need a permit signed by their parents and sent to the school administration, where their case can be analyzed and given permission. This seems like an easy way to solve the equity issue because only the people who really need it will have access.

Evidently, there are ideas, suggestions, and solutions to make the idea of making a parking lot for students in TCS become reality. These were only some ideas and I’m certain there are many more. It’s up to the school if they are open to analyzing and looking for results.