At Pleasant Grove High School, the first thing that greets and sees off students is not their friends or teachers – instead, it is the chaos of cars merging onto the school campus. 

As the new school year starts, the concern about unsafe driving practices by parent drivers is once again an issue.

Parent drivers prioritize their convenience through stopping in fire lanes, blocking student parking lots and double parking to drop off and pick up students. These tactics save their time – however, they create frustration among students, staff and other parent drivers.

Omar Carreon, the principal of Pleasant Grove High School who also oversees the drop-off/pick-up traffic, said the issue of parents’ unsafe driving practices has continued since he served at PGHS seven years ago.

“When I came here, I noticed that parents would just pull in, stop in the middle of the road and drop off, which causes traffic to back up, making other people late,” Carreon said. “It’s just kind of a compounding problem.”

Carreon noted that the school had recently repainted the curbs to signify the drop-off area and sent out newsletters to remind parents about the designated drop-off/pick-up spot. Despite the school effort to help solve the problem, parents still double park and cause delays.

“They will still stop at the drive-thru lane because it’s convenient for them to drop off or pick up right here in front of the front door instead of just driving 20 feet forward where there is an open spot,” Carreon said. “So that’s a challenge too.”

Acknowledging families who are new to the school and haven’t learned the system yet, Carreon is considering another method to teach parents.

“Right now, we’re thinking about doing something like a (public-service announcement), a little commercial, that we can show on our website about what we expect in terms of drop off and pick up in the morning and the afternoon,” Carreon said.

One of the challenges for school administrators, however, is that there is a lack of law enforcement during heavy traffic mornings and afternoons.

“We try to do our best to keep traffic flowing, but again, we’re not officers,” Carreon said. “So if a parent defies us, we don’t have a lot of authority as we can’t really issue consequences to parents.”

Student driver perspective

Parent drivers prioritizing their convenience is not just a problem between the school and parents. It also creates a clash between student drivers and parent drivers.

Hannah Luong, a senior at PGHS who drives herself to and from school, said she is often trapped in the parking lot with parent drivers blocking the student parking lot to pick up their children.

“One time I was backing out of my spot, but there was a parent across from me driving against the arrow,” Luong said. “Since it’s only one way, none of us were able to move.”

Luong said sometimes parent drivers park in student parking lots, leading to students having no choice but to wait. Despite the clash between students and parents, she admits that parents would put convenience first. Still, she hopes to see changes. 

“Parents should drop off and pick up their children at the exclusive drop-off zone,” Luong said. “Blocking the lot makes it harder for everyone.”

Parent driver perspective

Remy Carbonel, a parent driver with two daughters attending PGHS, regularly drives her daughters to school, and she describes the school route as “hectic and stressful.”

“I’ve also seen children run towards their car without looking for traffic,” Carbonel said. “There was also an incident between a pickup truck and a BMW from double parking, and they started yelling and cussing toward each other without even realizing that the classes were still going on.”

Hoping to avoid the chaos, Carbonel said she arrives at school two hours before the school is dismissed. Despite her efforts to arrive early, she can’t avoid the trouble of other parent drivers double-parking.

“We were on the yellow curb, we already picked (up) our kids, but there’s a lot of double-parking, so we can’t even go out,” Carbonel said.

Is there a potential solution?

PGHS’s freshman population grew by 100 students this year, meaning that there are more new parent drivers who are not used to the parking system. With growing enrollment and the school’s limited control over parents, a sudden change for the better isn’t likely. Instead, PGHS administrators hope parents will gradually adopt more thoughtful driving habits.

“Everybody’s trying to get their kid to school, and everybody’s getting to their next destination,” Carreon said. “But if people are patient, kind and respectful, then we can get through it without incident and ensure everybody’s safety.”