It\u2019s 3:04. People in the back of the class are stacking books silently. Mr. Straessle\u2019s voice finally booms on the intercom. He says, \u201cand that is all for today.\u201d The student body rushes outside, eager to get home.<\/p>\n
Watching all of it, Mrs. Melinda Martin stands in what used to be Jerry Jones\u2019 old office. It had a perfect\u00a0view of the football field, where Mr. Jones would watch his son with binoculars. Mrs. Martin can still\u00a0clearly see the freshmen waiting on their mothers to meet them at the door, while other parents try to\u00a0venture into her parking lot.<\/p>\n
Mrs. Martin is the building manager of Plaza West, directly across from Catholic. She\u2019s worked there for\u00a026 years, and is very familiar with the school.\u00a0She says the traffic had improved over the years, and officers helped. \u201cIt has gotten much better without\u00a0parking on the street, and police have helped, but I\u2019ve heard they\u2019re not going to stick around.\u201d<\/p>\n
The time of year also affects how much chaos there is out her front door. \u201cIn the spring, Dillard\u2019s parking\u00a0lot seems to get more filled.\u201d Mrs. Martin said she didn\u2019t think Dillard\u2019s minded parents parking there as\u00a0much as she did when they parked in the Plaza West spaces, because people who park there are inclined\u00a0to make a purchase.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe ask parents not to park here, and there\u2019s a sheet of paper put up that says so. It\u2019s signed by Mr.\u00a0Straessle and me. We also have security guards that are paid to stop parents from Catholic. I\u2019ve had to\u00a0start paying them for an hour more to protect our parking spots, because the building is fully leased.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMost of the time, it doesn\u2019t affect our tenants,\u201d Mrs. Martin said. \u201cNot many people who work in the\u00a0Plaza West building are coming and going at that time, but clients who show up a bit late to an\u00a0appointment can have problems trying to navigate the frenzy.\u201d<\/p>\n
So, in that case, what\u2019s the solution? \u201cCatholic needs to buy more property, and use it for parking.\u201d Mrs.\u00a0Martin said, and every year there seems to be more and more students attempting to park across the street\u00a0at other locations, since parking on school campus is so tight.<\/p>\n
Many students had similar reactions. Sophomore Walt Reber talked about walking to other places to\u00a0completely avoid the backup. \u201cInstead of just waiting at the doors for their mom to show up, freshman\u00a0should walk to the corner or down Father Tribou Street. Or even better, have them just walk across the\u00a0street to the Park Plaza Mall parking,\u201d said Reber.<\/p>\n
Not everyone agrees with the new setup. Another sophomore, Max Rice, said, \u201cI don\u2019t like the traffic as\u00a0much this year. It\u2019s way harder to get to my car, since you can\u2019t park on the street. I have to go over to\u00a0Park Plaza.\u201d<\/p>\n
But as much of a headache as the traffic outside is, there isn\u2019t a school that has traffic more worth being in. As Mrs. Martin said, \u201cIf you had to choose a better high school across the street, you couldn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s 3:04. People in the back of the class are stacking books silently. Mr. Straessle\u2019s voice finally booms on the intercom. He says, \u201cand that is all for today.\u201d The student body rushes outside, eager to get home. Watching all of it, Mrs. Melinda Martin stands in what used to be Jerry Jones\u2019 old office….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":7493,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[215,1],"tags":[225,184],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/liftoffnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/IMG_1322-1-e1475687621409.jpg?fit=192%2C299&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3xfZw-1WL","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/liftoffnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7487"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/liftoffnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/liftoffnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/liftoffnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/liftoffnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7487"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/liftoffnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7487\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7956,"href":"https:\/\/liftoffnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7487\/revisions\/7956"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/liftoffnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/liftoffnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/liftoffnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/liftoffnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}