Ladue High School has redrawn stripes in both the north and south parking lots and added 10 spots by the field house in order to attempt to accommodate everyone on the waiting list who has paid their school fines.

When 400 students requested parking spots, only 363 student parking spots were available and it appeared that some on the waiting list might not receive a spot even if they paid their fines on time. However, the number of available student spots grew as the school expanded the number of parking spots and as some students lost their parking passes due to unpaid fines. At the end of last school year, any student could request a spot regardless of whether their fines had been paid. Gail Martin, the administrator in charge of all parking arrangements, mailed a letter July 2 to all students with fines to warn them that if fines were still unpaid July 19, parking spots would be refunded, but that students would lose their parking passes.          

“I actually waited until today (Aug. 10) to start giving their spots away to people still on the waiting list, so I actually ended up giving them much more time than I had originally given them,” Martin said.

Martin worked throughout the summer to expand parking availability and provide a spot to all fine-free students who wanted one. If the new available spots still do not satisfy demand, the school hopes to further increase parking availability for students by converting unused staff spots into student parking spots.

The school encountered further challenges when information on the online parking registration system was altered. Several people realized something was wrong when they noticed that their registration info had changed. Martin was first informed of the incident when multiple parents and students called to tell her that they had received a parking pass although they never requested a spot.

“We used SurveyMonkey instead of a secure Ladue site and our tech people didn’t set it up,” Martin said. “I had multiple people call me that said they hadn’t even signed up for a spot, but that they were listed as having one.”

As part of their registration, each student must describe the car they will be driving. That information was also changed for some spots.

“Each student is allowed to have two cars per spot, but some people had more than that and one person even had six cars listed for one spot,” Martin said.

The online issues complicated the process of sorting out how many parking spots needed to be added and how many students actually wanted one. However, the district has not yet determined how and why the online information contained so many inaccuracies.

“We don’t know if it was hacked or if something went wrong with SurveyMonkey,” Martin said. “We noticed one person on the site three different times, but we couldn’t determine anything else.”

Regardless of whether the problem was a technological glitch or a hack, the disruption created inconvenience for the students affected as well as for Martin.

“I had two cars, but it only registered one,”  junior Elizabeth Richmond said. “My mom had to go to the school and get it corrected which was a slight hassle, but it was quite confusing.”

Although the school needed to increase the number of parking spots in order to accommodate those on the waiting list, this year’s requests were not uncharacteristic of past years. Technically, more students requested parking spots than ever before, but Martin said that the number of requests this year were about the same as last year.

“There were only ten less requests last year, but it feels like a lot more this year,” Martin said. “I guess the business with the system glitch could have led to this year feeling like an overwhelming number.”

Because some students forfeited their spots due to either textbook, library, or lunch fines, Martin said that parking will likely be available to all students currently on the waiting list. However, some students view the parking situation as chaotic and have found better alternatives. Last year, senior Xunyi Gao found a creative way to park near school while avoiding what she saw as the negatives of parking at the high school.

“I actually planned ahead of time not to park at school because I didn’t want to pay the money and deal with the horrible traffic,” Gao said. “One of my close friend’s boyfriend lives directly across the street at Foxboro so I asked him to park there. It was easy to leave since my car wasn’t on school property.”

Because of the glitch or hack in the system and the necessity of adding spots, this summer’s parking situation has been more work than usual for Martin. As of Friday, the parking lot was not yet finished and parking passes had not all been distributed.

“The parking lot still isn’t numbered  yet,” Martin said. “That really has to be finished before school starts or there will be a lot of confused students when school starts.” #