Most recently, the price of a parking spot has been $180 per year. With the start of the 2017-18 school year, the pricing will be dropping by $100 and cost $80 a year.

The Rockwood School District had its reasons for establishing such a high price on student parking passes.

A few years ago, the District was having financial difficulties, which caused major cuts to the budget of Lafayette, as well as the other Rockwood high schools. To compensate for the financial crunch, Rockwood decided to raise the parking passes to $180 a year.

“Each high school got a small percentage of the parking fee money for their own operating budget, but the majority of that money went to Central Office. The money went to the general operating budget, mainly the general upkeep of our lots,” Principal John Shaughnessy said.

Even though the price was established to benefit the school’s budget, complaints from parents and students soon flooded the office, remarking that the fee was unreasonably high for a high school parking space. As a result, all of the principals from the different school’s met up and discussed what could be done for the situation.

“Over the last several years and through a series of meetings, the principals from all four Rockwood high schools got together and supported a reduction in cost for student parking. For the last year and a half, we really felt it was necessary that we reduce the cost of student parking to a more reasonable amount,” Shaughnessy said.

The District approved of the reduction and was able to adjust the high school budgets in order to accommodate for the lower price.

Even with a total of 694 spots available for students to park in, the possibility of overflow becomes ever more likely with the increase in affordability of parking spots. If this were the case, a seniority system can be put into effect, where upperclassmen are given access to parking passes before underclassmen. Additionally, students are given the option to share a parking spot with a friend.

Although there are no refunds to those students who have been paying the higher rates, Shaughnessy is grateful for the cooperation with the policies that were put forth at that time and hope the underclassmen enjoy the reduction in cost moving forward.