Not parking a lot

Danette Goulet

NEWPORT BEACH -- For a student population of more than 2,000, at least

1,000 of whom have their licenses, Newport Harbor High School has about

250 parking lot spots.

This distinct lack of parking and an excess of cars are more than just

an inconvenience for students -- it is also a danger, students told the

school board Tuesday night.

“There are so many blind intersections and so many cars trying to find

spots in 10 or 15 minutes of time,” said Julia Hochner, president of the

Student Political Action Committee at Newport Harbor.

Members of the committee, who have been studying the problem this

year, brought this issue before the school board, where they outlined the

problems and shared a couple possible solutions.

To teachers and administrators, the main concern is students getting

hit in the crosswalks -- something that is not unheard of.

In a town hall meeting held by the political action group, one of the

five panelists was a student who had been hit by a car while she was in a

crosswalk her freshman year.

“I have seen several students come close to getting killed,” Assistant

Principal Lee Gatea said in a videotape of the meeting, where he also sat

on the panel.

To students, the biggest concern is the two-hour parking limit on

slots in front of the school and the need to get to school nearly an hour

before it starts if they want a spot less than a 10-minute walk away,

Hochner said.

“I get to school each morning at 7 a.m. or earlier -- that’s 45

minutes before school starts -- to get a spot on the street by school,”

said senior Danny Hilton. “By 7:10 a.m. [street parking spots for] two

blocks around the entire campus are gone.”

There are two parking lots at the school. One is the senior lot, which

has a total of 250 spots for 424 seniors. The other is the junior lot,

with about 100 spots for 469 students.

Those numbers do not even account for faculty and staff or the

sophomores who begin to get drivers licenses in the spring.

Hochner admitted that responsibility for part of the problem falls on

students, who do not fill the junior lot because they are unwilling to

make the 10-minute hike across the schools’ athletic field from the lot

to the school.

But even if those 20 or 30 spots left empty each day were filled, the

problem would not be fixed, students contend.

Recent traffic laws that forbid new drivers from transporting other

minors make car-pooling more difficult and the congestion will only

increase in the next several years, Hochner said.

While the current senior class has 424 students, the freshman class

has more than 600 students.

Some of the possible solutions students proposed were increased police

in the area to slow anxious drivers down or to place stop signs or

blinking lights at the blind and dangerous intersections.

In fact, installing blinking crosswalks similar to those in Laguna

Beach is one option Linda Menk, a PTA parent, has been working on for

some time.

These are only temporary solutions, however, to a long-standing

problem.

School board trustee Dana Black said students have brought the issue

to the board in the past and parents have fretted over it for years.

She suggested that a two-story parking structure where the tennis

courts currently sit is the solution she would like to see. Other board

members disagreed with that idea.

So while most people agree the solution is increased parking, the

question up for debate is where that parking will be and what form it

will take.

“In my opinion, a high-rise parking structure is the only solution

down the road,” Menk said.