McIntosh has been having on-going construction since the 2023-2024 school year. On Wednesday, Aug.27, over half of the golf cart parking spots were closed off, forcing golf carts to park in the car parking area. As fourth period dual-enrollment students arrived at McIntosh, they were met with a full parking lot. Cars began circling the parking lot looking for an empty space as parking attendant Stan Ledford, directed students to park along the curbs.
“They’ve taken our golf cart parking. It’s pushed all the carts into the parking lot, which has pushed all the cars up to the curbs, and basically, at 11 o’clock, we’re at capacity. This [the cars parked along the curbs] is very unusual over here, but I didn’t have any choice today. We just didn’t have anywhere [else to park],” Ledford said.
The three-year construction planned to build new tennis courts, baseball field, auxiliary gym, concession stands and expand the golf cart parking lot. With the new parking spots, McIntosh hopes to allow more golf carts to park on school grounds. Students used the alley behind Sprouts as their parking lot because they weren’t able to get a parking pass due to unavailable space. Last school year, Sprouts started towing vehicles that parked behind in that alley.
“So what’s going to happen is we have a single lane, a double lane in the middle, and then another single lane. [We’ll have] two lanes of traffic coming out, so they’re almost going to double our parking spaces, but it’ll soak up all of these golf carts, hopefully,” Ledford said, gesturing to the golf cart parking lot.
The dual-enrollment students who arrive before fourth period expressed their frustration at not being able to find a parking spot.
“I honestly pulled up a little bit early to school thinking about how hard it was to find parking this past week, and I seriously was going in circles for like a good bit. I didn’t pay $60 for me not to find a spot, especially when our cars can get towed if we park in any lot outside school grounds. I honestly think it just got worse with the construction taking so many spots. I hope that maybe more spots open up or something happens, but at the same time I understand. It just overall sucks,” senior Swara Bramhadevi said.
There has also been an increase in cars without parking passes in the McIntosh parking lots, which has been taking up the spaces necessary for dual-enrollment and first period opt out students to find spaces.
Another female student who wishes to remain anonymous also expressed her distress at the lack of parking spots.
“I was shocked to pull into the parking lot [and see it] almost full with no space to park plus get to class on time. Parking has been an issue at McIntosh for a while now, be it golf carts or cars and it needs attention for sure,” the anonymous student said.
“We’re slowly releasing the wait list at this point and then we’ll be able to drill down exactly how many stickers we really need to have for the parking situation here. Then we’ll make sure those that don’t have a sticker don’t park in the parking lot,” Ledford said.
Ledford plans on finding students who are parking in the lots without passes.
“You’ll get a warning, and then you’ll probably get detention right after that. Instead of two warnings then detention, we’re just gonna go from a warning to detention. So you can plan to spend 45 minutes after school or you might have to come Saturday morning instead. But there’s no excuses for not having a sticker. If you don’t have a sticker, take the bus, have your parents drop you off, walk, use a scooter, ride a bicycle, whatever it is, but it’s a privilege to park here,” Ledford said.
By the first week of Sept, the construction should be finished and McIntosh students will be able to find parking spots around the school.
“With the first football game coming out Friday, they’re getting all that [construction] cleared out. After Labor Day, we should have our golf cart parking back, [with] golf carts segregated from the cars, and then we’ll start to look like we should,” Ledford said.
