Students with driver’s licenses saved $40 this year when SDA stopped charging fees to use the parking lot.

Principal Tim Hornig said, “It was brought to our attention because of a lawsuit brought out by a community member. The district was supportive legally; we have every right to charge for parking, but, looking at it, we decided there was really no reason.” In addition, he said that district looks for ways to support its students, and eliminating the parking fee was a way of helping families who can’t afford to pay (even though he has let students who couldn’t afford the fee use the parking lot anyways, in past years).

When the lawsuit was first brought up, Hornig said that the school’s first course of action was to look at the legal implications with the aid of the district’s legal counselors. Also, the lawsuit ended up in the hands of a state agency, so the school made sure to communicate with the agency and address any issues.

“One of the realities of working in public education is that people think that we’re trying to pull the wool over people’s eyes,” Hornig said. “The reality is that we are working with and for families and kids, trying to offer the best viable education.”

Despite the free parking, the number of students parking at campus seems to not have increased. This could possibly be due to the fact that the current senior class in the smallest of all four grades. “We haven’t really seen an impact,” said Hornig. “Actually, to my surprise, it seems like the lot is emptier than ever.”

The absence of the parking fee has fortunately not affected the school’s budget for supplies and activities. In the past, the money that was made from the parking fee never went straight to the school to spend. “So it’s not as though the school is now coming up short financially,” Hornig said.

“We continually evolve,” Hornig said. “We look for better ways to support kids and in this case, it was like ‘Why charge for that?’ We didn’t want the final say in this issue to be if students couldn’t afford it, they couldn’t park.”