EDITORIAL
The Township Council should abandon plans to create special parking privileges for students on public streets near Lawrence High School.
Council hopes the plan will address student parking problems on residential streets. This plan will only legitimize the practice.
Under the plan, which will be up for public hearing Tuesday, parking would be limited on nine streets near the high school to those who live there. Special parking permits would be provided to those residents. This is fine. However, the plan goes awry when it goes on to mandate the creation of special parking spaces to be reserved for permit-holding high school students.
This plan is an obvious Band-Aid created by the well-intentioned Township Council to satisfy resident complaints while being sensitive to the district’s parking shortage. The implementation of this plan, however, actually does little to satisfy residents and even less to encourage the school district to take care of that albatross around its neck.
This problem exists because of the school district’s inability to either provide adequate parking for student motorists or discourage students without on-campus parking permits from driving to school. This problem belongs to the school district.
The township’s concern should be the residents who live near the high school and who say their lives are being disrupted by the students who park near their homes.
The township can fix its problem by limiting on-street parking between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. to 2 hours. Or, officials could look into expanding the existing ordinance that limits parking on Review Avenue, Berwyn Place and Fieldboro Drive, located behind the high school, to residents of those streets.
The number of parking spaces at Lawrence High School that are set aside for student motorists is not adequate for obvious reasons. We live in a day and age and town where many of our young people are given a set of car keys the day they turn 17. The privileged few have turned into the privileged plenty. The district is growing and the number of kids who drive cars to school is growing at a tremendous rate. The school district must be responsive to this and provide additional parking.
The township must limit parking on the affected streets near Lawrence High School. Period.
Failure to do this thereby leaving the residential streets near the high school to remain a dumping ground for the vehicles of other people’s sons and daughters is wrong.