Parking Issues Stuck in Neutral

“Sorry I was late, I couldn’t find a parking spot.”This commonly used phrase by students has been plaguing Samo for years, as a parking spot is a rare commodity to come by these days. With no available student parking on campus, students who drive to school over the past five years have been forced to pay ridiculous fees. The Doubletree and Civic Center offer student parking, but it can amount to over $140 per month. As of now there are no alternative parking options, and there has not been any real push by students to acquire some sort of affordable, easy access parking. And if there is no motivation and no real effort to acquire some sort of parking, the city and school are not going to just gift it to us. It will take a real movement from a large number of students to even get consideration of adding some sort of parking. And even then, the situation that we are in where the amount of available parking is slim to none, makes it seem like that it would take an uprising to get even some student parking. And even then, the city is not going to forfeit some of their parking to students when they could charge more to shoppers and visitors, just because some kids want parking in their district school which technically should be walking or biking distance from where they live. SMMUSD and the City of Santa Monica have a deal where a number of parking spots at the Civic Center parking lot on 4th street are sectioned off for Samo teachers and staff; they can park there daily and have no worry of not being able to find a spot. The school currently parks around 300 staff members off campus everyday. The city and SMMUSD has yet to include students in that deal and have no interest in doing so. Several attempts have been made by students and the district to strike a deal to give students parking at the Civic Center and Doubletree, but these attempts have not gone very far. “[Attempts for student parking] come and go, but no one has gotten very far. How do you justify paying for student parking when there are teachers who live far away that have to come to work everyday,” Dean of Students Catherine Baxter said.The city also encourages all drivers, not just students, to find a different means of transportation to cut down on traffic and improving the air quality. Cutting down the carbon footprint is something the city has been focused on for years now, and they want to reach all possible demographics, which includes students.There has not been any on-campus student parking since 2007 when Samo held a first come first serve parking lot. There was an old north lot where the Innovation Building currently stands that had some teacher parking and 40 student parking spots that were given away yearly via raffle (although students still had to pay for the spots). That lot went away with the construction of the Innovation building.Culver City High School has the commodity of free student parking, holding around 400 parking spaces. These spaces at Culver can be used daily, for seniors who have a parking pass administered by the school. At Palisades High School, there are parking lots that can be used all day, every day of the week, with a first come first serve basis, parking pass required. The problem that Samo has is that there is not any space to build these student lots, therefore the argument that we should have lots like Culver and Pali is out of the question, which only makes the situation harder to deal with. But besides these select schools, we are not alone in the absence of parking. Many high schools throughout LAUSD have zero student parking just like us. And the reasons for this lack of parking don’t differ from ours. There is either no space, no alternatives available or both. The argument could be made that when the new Discovery Building comes along, the lot being built could be used for students. However, it is not that simple. The new Discovery Building, which is still years away from being completed, will have around 200 parking spaces that will allow the staff that currently parks off campus to move back on campus. A push to have those spaces at the Civic center stay under Samo rentership and be given to students is a possibility, but not very plausible, seeing how the city and the school currently view the situation. And a Civic Center redesign that is planned in the upcoming years could have an effect on the amount of parking available. I am truly sorry for the students who drive to school and have to surrender to the outrageous conditions that the parking at Samo has, but a movement to get parking spots is just not going to happen. There are just not enough reasons, and the circumstances we are in do not favor a student lot. I hope something can happen in the future, some miraculous turnaround in favor of the students, but for now, we are stuck with what we have.