Bingham High seniors petition due to school parking shortage

SOUTH JORDAN, Utah — Some Bingham High School seniors in South Jordan, say a new parking policy for students is now preventing them from finding open stalls, which they say creates dangerous driving conditions and is making them very late for class.

That’s why seniors Sophie Curtis and Eleanor Wooley started a petition on Change.org. Hoping to change Bingham High School’s new policy. In a matter of a few days, they now have over 900 signatures and dozens of comments.

“I’ve drove around 45 minutes somedays to finding a parking spot,” Wooley said. “They don’t have enough for everyone and I think they gave out too many passes.”

“It’s been a major problem the first two weeks of school already,” Curtis said.

The girls believe the problem is because of a new parking pass policy Bingham High implemented this year – that allows all juniors to get a parking pass rather than only those selected in a lottery system like in previous years.

“Seniors have a very loose schedule. So many seniors don’t have a first period or a last period or they have work release,” Wooley said.

“I think the problem, I definitely think they gave out too many parking passes,” high school senior Luke Cantwell, who signed the petition, said.

Assistant principal Art Erickson says the school community council voted in favor of allowing all juniors the option to purchase passes this year. Plus he says a school survey last school year showed more than 70 percent of students in favor of it.

“So we moved forward on that action with the support of the community council,” Erickson said.

Erickson said right now the school has 700 parking stalls and there are 1,013 parking passes purchased by seniors and juniors. But about 70 or 10 percent of the parking stalls are taken up by construction. The school is hoping that construction will be wrapped up in another month.

And Erickson said this year they have only sold 29 more parking passes than last year.

“The parking lot here at Bingham has been a concern for many years,” he said. But he says they plan to listen to the students. “We are grateful for the input and if there are things we overlooked or things that need to be adjusted we are certainly open to that.”