At Dimond High School students are required to have a parking permit to be able to park in the “student parking.” At the beginning of the year the administration of the school allows a few weeks before they start enforcing the rules concerning student parking. You first must fill out a form stating what vehicle you drive, who insures it, license plate number, etc. The next step in the process is to turn the form in to Jon Ticket, a Dimond security guard, who then fills out a receipt and gives you a parking permit to hang in you vehicle. Overall, this sounds like a fairly easy process that people should not have problems doing. However, there is one small part that I forgot to mention in this process. You, as a student, must pay the school district an unfair sum of money, $50 per semester, equaling $100 a year, which in turn means $300 dollars during your high school career if you start driving in the 10th grade, as many students do. If you do not follow these unjust rules, the school will fine you and could ban you from parking there the rest of the year. Why does the school need to charge students to park on school grounds? Our parents along with our tax dollars (for students who work) built this school, and the parking lots that we should be able to park on for little or no charge. What does this money that the school receives from students every semester go to? I can tell you one thing: It definitely is not going toward the gym’s sound system that continually fails during assemblies. I believe that the school district has no right to charge us this amount of money just to park our vehicles. Teachers do not have to pay anything to park their vehicles, so why should we? I know some people would say that the teachers shouldn’t have to pay because they work here; however, for some students school is their “work,” so why should they suffer? According to Senior Ethan Schneider, “Students should not have to pay for parking permits because we already pay for a million different other things. Such as lunch, activity fees, yearbooks, class fees, and for seniors all of the necessary items that go along with graduation. I think it is unfair for the school to make us pay this amount for parking.” I think the best way for the school to handle this situation is to set up a system with different parking rates for different grade levels. This would make the most sense, considering the school will most likely not get rid of parking permit costs. I believe that the school should set up a system such as this: $50 per semester for sophomores (because this is the earliest grade level that students can begin driving), $40 per semester for juniors and finally $30 per semester for seniors. I think this way of setting parking permit prices makes the most sense because seniors are the ones who have been driving the longest; they are going to be the most responsible because of their age and because it is their last year of high school so they need to be saving money for college. Freshman Colby Ferguson said, “I like this idea that Hans has come up with because the longer you go here, the more privileges you should be given. Just like in the real world the people with more experience get more benefits and discounts.” In my opinion, I think that the school should either get rid of the parking permit system, because we already pay for many things at the school, or they should set up a system like the one I have proposed that lowers the cost of parking as you get older. If the District does not change its ways, it is causing more people to not buy the permits, which in turn creates more economic hardship (through fines and being banned). The District is also forcing more students to park across the street, which creates safety hazards along that road.