Parking spots are being permanently changed at Newton High School. The parking lot was supposed to be re-paved by the end of the summer, so students had time to paint their spots, this time with a four-inch barrier from the lines. Since that never got appointed, the students have been unable to paint their spots. That being said, some students are upset about this because they have already paid for a spot.
Assistant principal Tige Stone said right when summer started this year, they let the teachers know they were going to redo the parking lot.
“Regular maintenance has not accrued in a couple of years, and re-paving hasn’t happened in about 15-20 years, which is significantly overdue,” Stone said.
Through the district’s capital outlay schedule, the high school’s parking lot re-paving was on schedule. However, it didn’t get done this summer, so it will have to get done at some point in the year. Stone said these decisions are not made by any of the teachers or by principal Blake Smith here at the high school, they are made on the district level by Chris Shaffer, the director of facilities.
“So those are things, we don’t fully have much knowledge of or much power over [it]… We just kind of do what they tell us to do in that regard,” Stone said.
Senior Reese McCord said she was a little frustrated because she paid money and she’s not going to be able to paint it how she wanted to because it would get painted over. However, McCord doesn’t have problems with some of the other changes, such as the new four-inch line barrier.
“You know it doesn’t really matter it will probably make it look cleaner, so we don’t paint the lines,” McCord said.
Junior Rileigh Hankins thinks the parking spot delay is pretty irritating since the students were not aware of the situation before they bought their spots.
“We were told that those spots would not be ours after the resurfacing meaning we would be placed in a random spot,” Hankins said.
She also said the four-inch change is reasonable and saves the school time so they don’t have to go back and redo the yellow lines.
“I am not sure when I will paint my spot due to the fact that it will change,” Hankins said. “Paint is expensive so I am not sure if it is worth risking the money if I’m going to have to paint a different spot.”
