Parking at Hawthorne High School is a hassle and there have been many complaints about the lack of easily accessible parking spaces available to students. There have been reports from the Borough of Hawthorne that they will increase funding to schools in order to expand parking lots and provide more spaces.  Hawthorne High School has decided to move forward with the parking lot expansion project and made the decision to convert the hockey rink into a new additional parking lot for students to use.

The Clarion reached out to high school senior Darien Freda about the current parking situation.

“ The parking is fine,” said Freda,  “but I feel there should definitely be senior parking.”

We also reached out to Cole Biedrzycki.  “Oh I mean like it’s not horrible,” added Biedrzycki, “I  never really catch myself walking too far but then again I’m used to walking, so a bigger parking lot in the back would be better.”

Clearly there is an issue with the school’s parking in its present form and there will soon be a solution to it.

What will happen is they will completely take down the rink, remove the fence dividing the rink and the current parking lot, and replace the grass with pavement. This would successfully double the size of the parking lot and accommodate many more vehicles while still remaining easily accessible.

The Clarion asked David Zheng about his thoughts on the construction of a new parking lot and he said, “You have to wake up too early to get a spot so having more than double the spots would give me and other people a higher chance to find a spot later in the day.”

Although we will no longer have an outdoor hockey rink, the benefits of a new parking lot outweigh the costs of putting it there.  The new parking lot is set to begin construction this summer and will be completed in the spring of 2017.