News

Parking Problems: Students’ vehicles parking behind Sprouts getting booted

Cari Heinonen, Staff

Apr 25, 2025

An image of a student’s car with a boot on the back right tire and tools to attempt to remove it.

For the past few years, students at McIntosh High School have had issues with the parking situation. Students who don’t have a parking spot are parking in the school lot without being ticketed or disciplined, and students who park their vehicle in the remote parking lot behind Sprouts – which is private property – are now being booted.

The new signs surrounding the parking lot behind Sprouts in the Shops at Lexington Circle. (Cari Heinonen)

In order to get a parking spot, students have to complete a Google Form found on Schoology. Once completed, they are automatically put on the waiting list. Students who receive a parking spot will fill out another form as well as pay for their spot. To park a golf cart, students pay $40 and to park a car, students pay $60.

Before the owner started towing and booting vehicles parked in the remote lot behind Sprouts, many students parked their golf cart or car there, leaving no issues with finding parking spots in the school parking lot.

Hall monitor Stan Ledford disagrees that the overcrowding of the parking lot is due to the remote lot being considered private property, rather the combination of all of the construction and lack of parking spots in the school lot causing confusion.

“We have construction going on, which is taking away parking spots, and we have the sprouts and the church situation, which has forced people to park whether they have a sticker or not,” Ledford said.

Students who are parking without stickers have not been fined or warned about any punishment because former principal Leon Hammond was also the former “discipline manager” at McIntosh when it comes to the parking.

“I don’t handle any of [ the parking ] as far as the enforcement of it. I just do the ticketing and inspection part of it, and then I hand it over to our assistant principal. Now that Hammond is gone, the discipline has kind of wavered,” Ledford said.

One McIntosh student, who wished to remain anonymous, made a public google document to give an example of the type of emails that should be sent to address the parking issues, available to anyone who clicks on the link. Other students are amplifying this information by posting the link to the document on their personal social media accounts.

Image of a Snapchat story posted to the “MHS 2026” public story with a link to the Google Doc.

Donate to The Trail - The Student News Site of McIntosh High School

$565

$750

Contributed

Our Goal

Your donation supports the student journalists of McIntosh High School. Your contribution allows us to cover our annual website hosting costs, to help pay printing costs for "Back to Mac" magazine, and continuing education for staff, such as SNO trainings and MediaNow! editorial leadership training.

About the Contributors

Cari Heinonen, Staff

Cari Heinonen is a freshman at McIntosh and this is her first year on the Trail Staff. She plans to focus on photography and writing. Heinonen holds membership in Beta club and the National Thespian Society. She is also a part of McIntosh’s color guard program and dances at the Peachtree City School of Dance. In Heinonen’s free time, she enjoys reading and listening to music.

Ryan LeVan, Multimedia

Ryan LeVan is a Junior at McIntosh and a is serving his second year on staff. LeVan is very passionate about things such as family, friends, pets and fitness. LeVan’s specialty lies in photography, holds a GSPA superior rating and has extensive experience in nature and sky photography and videography. LeVan is on the McIntosh wrestling team and an advocate for personal fitness and training. He also is a Life Scout in Scouts BSA and is currently working on his eagle project. LeVan has won multiple awards in scouting. LeVan’s ambitions for the future include attending “ICE Culinary School” and obtaining a Masters Degree in business to ideally open and run his personal restaurant. LeVan is excited to have the opportunity to succeed in The Trail as a Multimedia Staffer and to help teach any less experienced staffers how to be successful in journalism and more specifically photography.