Driving to school is a cherished rite of passage, and the parking permit is second only to the driver’s license in the suburban teen’s Declaration of Independence from mom and dad. Yet it comes at a cost. Specifically at WCA it comes at the cost of a $50 parking pass required of all students wishing to drive to and park at school.

At Westminster, the cost of keeping a new parking lot from cracking is alone very expensive. Facilities Director, Mark Jennings,  provided that the cost of striping the parking lot is approximately $10,000.00. That figure doesn’t include the cost of crack sealing, salting, and the truck to plow the parking lot when it snows. After all of these costs are totaled together, the final price upwards of $17,000.00.

Considering the fact that the cost of a parking pass per student is $50 and around 250 students buy parking passes the revenue generated only amounts to approximately $12,500. This means that Westminster still has to pay nearly $5000 out of the operating budget. The price of a pass in some school districts can be around $200 (Washington Post), and $50 is a below average asking price.

As previsously stated in a Roar article, the school is not trying to obtain extra cash in their pocket from charging the students money to park. Though the students at Westminster understand where the money goes toward, every year the comments arise about how they should not have to pay for parking passes because it must be included in the thousands of dollars for tuition.

Parking passes serve another purpose as well. In case of an accident in the parking lot the passes aid in identifying a vehicle’s owner.

“A student’s car will get bumped when another student is parking their vehicle. We’ll use the parking pass to identify the owner of the car that was dinged so that we can alert them to what happened.” said Todd Fuller, Assistant Head of School.