Things are still revving up in the controversial student parking issue between two of Huntley’s closest neighbors – Sun City and Huntley High School.
Huntley School District 158, which administers the high school on its Harmony Road campus, has proposed a potential long-term solution. Sun City residents in Neighborhoods 28 and 38 next to the high school property are upset with students parking cars on community streets and then trespassing on their properties to get to and from school. They are focused on short term or immediate action.
In the past two weeks, the District 158 board of education took a step that they say should resolve the problem. It will take several months, possibly longer, to get it done, however.
The school district’s governing board last month authorized a program to research, design, and build a new student parking area on either the north (Harmony Road) side of the campus or the south (Sun City) side. An engineering firm will be hired to research several options for expanded parking for students, according to Dan Armstrong, the district’s director of communications.
“We have suggested that any site chosen provide at least 100 spaces and not more than 200,” he said. “No timetable has been set yet for the project, which is expected to cost up to about $48,000 for research and design. We want to get this issue resolved for the community. We are aware that we do not have enough student parking spaces now to meet the student demand, and we are aware that Sun City residents are upset that some students park in their neighborhoods and cut through their properties to reach the high school campus.”
Armstrong said the high school’s student parking lot now has 692 spaces, about 125 more than it had before construction of the addition to the high school began in 2013.
“But we have a waiting list of about 80 families,” so that’s another reason why we felt we had to take this extra step to expand our facilities. We have encouraged our students multiple times not to park on Sun City streets, but we cannot require them to stop, because Sun City streets are public roadways,” Armstrong said.
Sun City resident complaints about student parking have increased in intensity and frequency in recent months, triggering a series of meetings with parents at the Huntley Police Department and discussions at the Huntley Village Board and the school board. Village officials at one point considered placing “No Parking” signs on streets in Sun City Neighborhoods 28 and 38, but tabled that discussion until the school board made a decision, according to Sgt. Leonard Marak, the police department’s liaison to Sun City.
Sun Citian Arnold Mattis, a resident of Windsor Drive in Neighborhood 28, said the signs would be counter productive. He believes the signs would not be effective, would inconvenience residents with guests, and take away the aesthetic appeal of Sun City.
But Mattis was even more critical of the district’s policy of requiring a 1.7 grade point average before students can obtain a parking permit. Mattis said he holds a doctorate in education with expertise in the fields of organization, leadership, and educational program evaluation.
In an email two weeks ago to school board members, he said, “These students with GPAs below 1.7 will be looking for someplace else to park, and they have discovered that they can successfully park in Sun City residential neighborhoods bordering the high school. Why is there any particular GPA needed for the cutoff? Why single out students with a low GPA for this type of punishment? Why do you need this virtual caste system? I suspect it is because you know you don’t have enough parking spaces for all eligible students, so you simply select the cut off GPA to exclude the right number of students from parking, to match the shortage of parking spaces.”
Mattis does feel that there is a way to fix this issue.
“I believe the best solution is to provide parking accommodations for all students who have driver’s licenses and who want to drive to school,” he said. “Will it carry a price tag? Yes, of course, But you have a school bus system that could be consolidated to cut costs if more students drive.”
Sun City resident Art Grieshaber, the neighborhood rep for Neighborhood 38, has also been vocal.
“We voted in our neighborhood last week to ask that a fence be erected all along the border of our neighborhoods with the school property,” he said. “It should be higher to prevent students from climbing over it, and strong enough to withstand damage and bad weather. If that isn’t possible, then we ask for the no parking signs.”
Grieshaber also was sharply critical of the behavior of some of the students that park cars in Sun City and cut across community properties.
“Some of them have been verbally abusive to residents who have approached them, and there has been vandalism to our properties. A private fence has been spray painted and some gas grills were turned on,” he added. “Most of the kids at the high school are wonderful, serious students, but there are a few who spoil that image. They often walk in groups and yell at residents. Some of our residents are actually afraid of them, and this is probably the reason that a lot of our people have not filed official complaints about their parking or behavior with the police,” Grieshaber said.
Sgt. Marak has said the police department would issue tickets to students that trespass on Sun City properties if the residents make an official complaint. So far, however, no residents have done this.
”We have put a lot of extra resources into this issue, and we will continue to patrol these areas,” he said.
