It’s almost nine o’clock. You’re driving to school, but as you drive down Sunshine Drive, there’s no parking. Now, five minutes until the bell, you drive down Houston, but once again, no parking. Your last resort: hope there are spaces available in the band lot off of Koenig. There are spaces, luckily, but now there are only two minutes left until you’re tardy, and you must walk almost 10 minutes to get to your class in the main building. So, what can we do to fix this common problem for students?

While many schools have multiple parking lots or assigned parking spaces for students, McCallum has nothing. It is generally a free-for-all, and those who are unable to park in the one busy parking lot at Mac or on the school’s side streets end up having to park on the residential blocks further away from the school.

With construction on the west side of campus, parking on Grover Avenue is further limited as large trucks and construction equipment lay across both sides of the road. These blockades and limited parking cause further issues, as some students take creative measures to be able to park near Mac, including parking illegally or in no parking zones.

It is no surprise that those living in the surrounding neighborhoods or tenants of the apartments across the street have reached out to the administration explaining their frustration with the parking that floods their streets and parking lots. But it doesn’t have to be this way, if Mac can provide more parking and stricter guidelines.

Bowie High School has built a multi-level parking garage on its limited-size campus. The garage also serves as a multi-use facility, with tennis courts paved onto the top story. The band lot on the north side of campus is used in the mornings and evenings regularly by the marching band, making that location for a large garage not feasible, but Mac should (and could) recreate what Bowie did first, and build a parking lot or garage on the west side of campus that could also accommodate sports like tennis.

There are other options that Mac needs to consider if building a large concrete structure behind the school is not possible. LASA High School, as well as other schools in Austin ISD, have adopted a permit structure, where students who drive to school are required to have a permit to park in designated areas on campus.

Nevertheless, it may be a while before the school adopts a structured policy to handle the large influx of cars that crowd the school every morning.There is, however, immediate action that the administration can take, like a permit system, to improve the parking at Mac for the long haul.