Just like finding a parking spot can start a person’s day off right, not finding one can cause intense frustration.
The short supply of legal parking spaces around the high school has left students and staff competing for a limited number of spots. Staff have been allocated parking passes and streets on which they are allowed to park. Though students cannot legally park on the streets surrounding the campus — Greenough Street, Tappan Street, Sumner Road and Davis Avenue — many still do.
According to Assistant Head of School Hal Mason, who manages the allocation of parking, there is no legal student parking in the area.
“All parking in the vicinity of the high school is subject to the rules of the Town of Brookline, which means that teachers with permits can park in those spaces,” Mason said. “No one else can park in any of those spaces.”
Junior Ella Myers drives to school almost every day because she lives a 40-minute walk away, has a Z-block class that begins at 7:30 three days a week and has lacrosse practice after school. She said the opportunity of driving to school motivated her to get her driver’s license.
“I knew my mom hated driving me everywhere, and a lot of the time she’d rather I walk. A lot of my friends live far away, and walking to school was not ideal, especially when I’m carrying all of my sports bags and have to get there at 7:30,” Myers said.
Dean Lisa Redding said tension over parking arises because there are so many people who want parking but not enough spots. She said staff and administration report cars that do not have a permit sticker to the police for ticketing and, if they are parked illegally (for example, blocking a hydrant or a driveway), for towing.
“I empathize with students who come from further away in Brookline, particularly South Brookline, and have nowhere to park,” Redding said. “It’s also tough for our staff who are trying to get to work. So, there is often a tension when a staff member pulls up to go to work in their designated spot, can’t even find a spot on their designated street, and they see a student pull up or get out of their car and park there.”
Redding said she often struggles to find parking when coming in for work.
“It’s impossible to find [parking],” Redding said. “I get here at 7:30, usually. If I have something in the morning, like if I have a meeting at my son’s school and I get here after 8:30, [I have to] circle the block and circle the block. Later into the morning, you’re parking way farther [away].”
According to Myers, the repeated ticketing causes a financial burden for students and often gets excessive.
“I’m fully aware that the reason that we get ticketed is because there’s certain people that are calling the cops to come and regulate it, which is super frustrating. I personally have to pay for all of my tickets. It gets to the point where I’m not able to pay for the tickets anymore,” Myers said. “When you get ticketed every single day of the week and you’re just trying to find a street to park on that you won’t get ticketed, it just gets to be very difficult.”
Myers said she thinks the school should come up with a system to allocate limited parking to certain students.
“If there was a way to make [student] permits or a way to waive the tickets for students and do some sort of community service in return, that would be super helpful,” Myers said. “And then, if there is that [space] limitation and there’s opportunity for upperclassmen to get a permit, then it would be more reasonable, if you don’t get that permit, to carpool or walk.”
According to Redding, parking is a town issue rather than one the school administration can fix.
“Over the years, students have tried to rally in favor of some student parking stickers, which I totally support, not the prime spots, but some streets further. But it’s really a town thing because the town only gives the school a certain amount of stickers per street because the residents on that street want to also park on that street,” Redding said.
Mason said he cannot envision any scenario in which students are able to park legally near campus or obtain parking permits.
“There is zero chance of that ever happening. I don’t have enough space for the staff that I have,” Mason said. “The allocation of spaces for the school has evolved over the past 30 years, since the renovation of the school in the 1990s, and the number of staff in the school has only increased, so I have more need for spaces than I have possible spaces.”
While a street might be able to fit a certain number of cars, Redding said the town will only give the school a smaller number of permit stickers to leave room for residents.
“We could petition the town for more stickers on the street. But, we want to be good neighbors. If you have somebody coming to do your plumbing or your landscaping, you want them to be able to park near your house. So if we take up all the spots, that’s impossible,” Redding said.
Mason said that even if zoning laws were to change, he would still need to prioritize staff parking.
“I need my people who work in the cafeteria to be able to get here and park so they can make breakfast. I need my custodians to be able to get here and park so they can open the school and get the restrooms clean. I need my teachers to be able to park so they can get in on time to prepare their lessons and do their jobs,” Mason said. “All of those people would take priority over students, who all live in the town and therefore have the ability either to walk or ride bicycles or take the T to get to school.”
For Redding, who has worked at the high school for 25 years, the tensions around parking feel frustrating to everyone involved, but they are certainly not new. She said the underlying issue is that Brookline is densely populated.
“We get a new set of students every year,” Redding said. “So everybody is like, ‘This is a problem.’ I’m like, ‘I know, it’s been this way forever.’ It’s not a new problem. It’s an ongoing problem and I don’t know what to do about it.”
