Students and faculty are concerned about the school parking lot after constant near-accidents and traffic jams. The new parking lot was supposed to be a dream, but right now it’s a nightmare.

“The Skyline parking lot sucks. I hate it,” Maddie Gibson, a Skyline Junior, said. She speaks for all.

It is poorly designed and inefficient. It takes forever to get in and out of the parking lot, with many having to park on Frontage Road. The parent drop-off zone isn’t working either, and it’s difficult to run smoothly.

Taylor Williams, an English and Art teacher at Skyline, had some remarks. “I don’t have many problems with students or anything. I’m sure they probably park in visitor or teaching sometimes, but I have seen students be super careful drivers for the most part.” Williams said. “However, when parents come to pick up students or drop things off, they often will just stop and park behind the teacher’s cars, and I’ve had to knock on a lot of windows to get them to move so I can back out of my space. Or they pause and make a whole line when they’re dropping people off, because they won’t pull forward. Everybody’s really nice and polite about it, but it has been a little frustrating.”

There are no successful areas. Inside the parking lot, parents are causing traffic jams, and on Frontage Road, students are almost getting in accidents trying to back out of their spots. While students are mostly not at fault, the crosswalks are a nightmare, and it’s hard to be a pedestrian. 

I used to ride a scooter to Skyline, and I have almost been hit crossing crosswalks. The lines are crammed together, and people often don’t even realize that there is someone trying to cross. With blind spots and a speed limit far too high, it’s a recipe for absolute disaster. 

Luckily though, this won’t last long. Ben Anderson, an assistant principal at Skyline, breaks the news that more parking and a better system will be in place in 2026 after the B building is cleared out.

But what can be done in the meantime? 2026 is at least a year away, and that’s assuming the parking lot is finished early that year. Gibson suggested hiring traffic conductors to smooth out the roundabout and help pedestrians. Williams said more signs for the parents would help, as faint arrows are useless in the snow.

 I concur with both of them, but we shouldn’t even need to fix this. The design is bad, and I hope other schools will use the parking lot as an example of what not to do.