Frank White, a contractor who lives near Yorktown High School, is fed up with the school’s parking problems.
The lack of available parking forces students to park in nearby areas and this makes life difficult for residents of the Yorktown neighborhood, which is located around the school. White calls the parking situation "grossly inadequate" and he expressed his frustrations at a meeting held by the Arlington County School Board last week.
The purpose of the meeting, held at Yorktown High School, was to reveal a glimpse of what the school will look like after its multi-million dollar renovations.
But the plans were met with skepticism from several dozen people who attended the presentation, mostly residents of the area near the school.
The most striking feature of the new Yorktown High School will be a wide-open courtyard located in the center of the school. Sarah Woodhead, the director of design and construction for Arlington Public Schools, said "The courtyard creates a vibrant heart in the middle of the school."
She said "People were excited about the idea of having a public space in the middle of the school that would support a cafeteria, a lobby, a media center and other things that could move around the courtyard. The courtyard also gets more daylight into the school and I think that will make a big difference"
The school will use this abundance of natural light by using walls made of glass. Ehrenkrantz Eckstut and Kuhn Architects, the firm contracted to design the renovation, said glass walls will increase the amount of natural light going into the building which would cut down on the school’s heating bill and make it more environmentally friendly.
They also emphasized that making the walls of the school transparent would create "subtle security" for students and teachers by allowing them to see what is happening outside.
However, School Board Member David Foster disagreed with this assessment saying that, "with memories of the [Malvo sniper case] in mind," the glass might be a liability instead of an asset.
RESIDENTS OF THE YORKTOWN NEIGHBORHOOD comprised most of the audience at the presentation. The main issue in the designs that they took umbrage with was the lack of on-site parking.
Currently, the school has 190 parking spaces and they are used by staff members. All of the school's student drivers are forced to park on the surrounding streets.
After the renovations, there will be 268 spaces during school hours. However, on evenings and weekends the school must share its parking facilities with nearby Greenbrier Park and this would decrease available parking spaces during these times.
Many residents complained that before and after school the traffic on and around Yorktown Boulevard and 28th Street N is unbearable.
They were disappointed that the renovation plans don’t significantly raise the number of available parking spaces. They were also concerned that during large events at the school, such as football or soccer games, the plan to share parking with Greenbrier Park will cause chaos.
White didn’t think the redesign of the school will do anything to solve the problem. "They gave us a lot of numbers tonight," White said, "but we’ll see what really happens when the rubber meets the road."
Several residents advocated a "bring the hammer down" approach that would involve revoking students’ school parking privileges and ramping up efforts to give tickets to students who speed in the neighborhood.
Frank K. Wilson, vice-chair of the Arlington County School Board, acknowledged the frustration of the people in attendance but cautioned against creating parking policies that are punitive against the students. "These are our kids," he said. "They live here [too]."
John Vihstadt, the president of the Yorktown PTA, said that his organization "appreciates the concerns of the neighborhood with respect to parking and [it] agrees that greater efforts need to be taken to deal with the parking management issues." But he feels that the issue should not interfere with the much-needed renovations to the school. "If the county determines that [more parking] can’t be built," Vihstadt said, "we don’t want to sacrifice a new school at the altar of more parking."
The presentation was the latest step in the project to renovate Yorktown High School, which began in March of 2002. Phase I of the renovation project, a three story, 55,000-square-foot addition to the school, was completed in 2004. Construction on Phase II of the project is set to begin during the summer of 2008 and will take four to five years to complete.