My Turn By George Pycik Jr.

About school parking fees The Delaware Valley High School is quite a well respected school, certainly for its sports program. If you ignore the drug problem that surfaced mainstream last year after years of administration disregard, DV is riding “high.” Homeowners within the school district have been willingly paying their property taxes to fund the school. In addition, Pike County’s citizens are, of course, paying state income taxes and sales taxes, and the state collects more with its many permit and license fees. Unfortunately, the sixty seven million dollar budget and the ever increasing state grants worth millions upon millions of dollars is not enough for the school. For the past few years, the Delaware Valley School District has been imposing a seemingly greedy and self-enriching charge on its students, that being an extra fee to park on school property. The school district has smacked taxpayers with a charge of $50 to allow their children (and not teachers) to park on school - read public - property. In addition, the student must give authorization to the school to search their car. Shockingly, the registration form does not even give a definitive statement that the search must be accompanied by a conceivable suspicion. Why should a student trying to receive an education be strapped to such invasive stipulations just to park where they already have legal empowerment to do so? These students are not parking on school property to cause havoc. They are not just hanging out. They are trying to get an education! The irritation of both students and parents over this situation became evident when students began parking in the adjoing Wal-Mart parking lot. Although nothing gives these students the right to trespass on private property, the school’s ignorant and thoughtless parking policy certainly invited such problems. This counter-action continued for a couple of years without a big deal, but with a definite anger boiling from within administration. This year, though, the school began wasting local resources to “break down” on the trend. They even set up meetings with Wal-Mart management to pull them further into the matter. Wal-Mart, before the meeting (or meetings), did little to stop such supposed trespassing, probably recognizing the fact that many of the students frequently purchased from Wal-Mart after school. It appears that it is mostly the school’s initiative to go after the students. Wal-Mart seems to just be going along because it is, as the school claims everything they do is, for the “community good.” It is apparent that the school is driving the effort not for any desire to help the local Wal-Mart, but instead to gain an extra $18,000 for themselves and enforce a control over the students that only parents should have. In order to implement their policy, the school has gone to ridiculous lengths. The school sends its head police officer in an unmarked SUV to spy on any student in the Wal-Mart parking lot. If he finds any student walking over to the school, the officer authorizes a tow and the car is impounded. This is not exactly a horrible of a process, as Wal-Mart agreed, but the vice principal, whose job is to take care of the school and of the students within school property, has decided on select occasions to tag along while he is supposed to be preparing for the school day. When he could be outside the school, talking with the students and dealing with questions and problems before school, he is riding around on private property without any future intention of purchasing items at Wal-Mart. Isn’t that what he was supposed to be trying to stop? Trespassing? I guess “law enforcement officer” was added to the job description of high school principal. To put the icing on this tall cake, the school now has teachers pulled from their classrooms, preventing preparation for their classes, to take down the names of students who walk onto school property from the Wal-Mart parking lot. Who pays for this? You got it! The taxpayers! The same people who have to pay the fifty bucks to have their children park on the school’s property in the first place. Something has gone terrible wrong. A right as now become a privilege. The taxpayers’ property is no longer being run for the good of the taxpayer, but it instead just another apparatus for the government to reap its will and control. A simple problem, ignored by the property owner, has become a full-blown war with DV. And for what reason? School spirit? Better education? More parent-teacher interaction? No. Instead, it is all done for money and control…like everything government does. George Pycik Jr. is a resident of Dingmans Ferry