Letter to the Editor: Improving the parking situation at the school

I have been contemplating this letter for several years now. I park up at the Junior High daily, I make sure to get there in plenty of time to get an actual parking spot. This is hard to do some days when you get people taking up two parking spots.
Now I know some of you will say in winter time it's hard to see the lines and that may be so, but if you look they are still visible. Not only are people taking up two parking spots daily, but there are people parking in no parking zones as well as blocking driveways.
Now I know parking is limited around our schools, but common sense and obeying the traffic laws would be a step in the right direction. Maybe reworking the parking lots to allow more and better access for the busses as well as for parents, with the busses having first priority on leaving to keep them on schedule. Maybe building more student parking further away from the school so that more spots would be opened up to parental parking as well as teacher parking to get the teachers' cars off the street and into a parking lot would also help.
Then issuing permits that have to be displayed for teachers to park in designated areas and students to park in their areas. Maybe fines for those who ignore the designated areas, which could then be used to help defray the costs of keeping these lots up, as well as the police patrolling them and issuing tickets for people who block driveways, park in no parking zones and taking up more than one parking spot.
Traffic is bad enough around these areas in the morning and afternoon, especially when people do not follow the law or show no courtesy to fellow drivers. If you really think about it, how much time do you save by not letting other people pull out? Is that 30 seconds really that much for you to be rude or get mad over? Do you appreciate other people allowing you to pull out into traffic or turn left onto side streets?
Do you want better parking, better access to these areas, and even the chance to show your children that being kind behind the wheel is so much better than your blood pressure being sky high? Road rage is against the law, so why not just relax and spend the extra time talking to your children while you wait for someone to park, pull out, or turn left in front of you?

David Ebeling
Waukon