Sometimes you just need a little color in your morning. That’s why students at school in Austin, Texas at James Bowie High School have something that Mehlville should: a parking lot with spaces that people can paint themselves.

    Before the first day of school at James Bowie, students fill out a form saying that they would like to be able to paint their parking spot for their upcoming school year. It is a privilege that seniors get to be apart of and it gets kids excited about being able to have their own parking spot and to be able to be creative and show their humor.

    Not only would this be a creative outlet for students to express their painting and creativity, but it is a positive and supportive thing that all juniors and seniors can be a part of no matter if they are involved in school. At Mehlville, It should be open to both juniors and seniors. Junior year starts the beginning for most kids to take the ACT and start researching colleges, while seniors are trying to put the final touches on their after high school plans. Why not add some color and let them make their mark before the school year starts?

    Mehlville has a similar activity but on a smaller scale. The paw prints that seniors can paint is only open to seniors and is only about two feet wide. However, the audience that sees them is only confined to the people that go to the football field and enter from the top entrance. If students get to paint their parking spots it could be seen by such a wider audience and there is a wider template to use to express creativity.

   The junior lot is already crazy. This way, it could also give kids more of an incentive to park in the lines and to not take others spots. The junior parking lot could become safer because students would know who the “bad parkers” were and who is taking their spots in the morning because and some of the problems could go away.  

    However, the issue that is brought up is painting over the parking spot at the end of the year and the cost it would take to do it. Mehlville only resurfaces (paints the lines, numbers, does asphalt work, etc) every three years. If students had the opportunity to paint over their parking spots, it would require some outside funding. A solution could be to pay to paint your spaces and the money raised could go to the fund to repaint over it at the end of the year. If students bring their own exterior or interior latex paint to school over the summer and bring their own tools and brushes, then the money raised could contribute to the cost it takes to repaint the junior lot.

However, if we wanted the money to be a good fundraiser for the school in general, another solution could be that we divide each parking space with two horizontal lines and have three different rectangles inside the parking space so that each year a student could paint their spot and then after three years it would get resurfaced and there is no extra money being spent to resurface and paint over it. Students could “share” these spaces with their older and younger siblings if they choose to pick the spot their friend or sibling chose the year before. It’s kind of a cute bonding experience too.

Over the summer teachers could volunteer if needed and any ]club that would want to take over this could supervise to make sure everything is appropriately painted. This is a pretty simple requirement for the positivity that students could get when they paint their own parking spot.

Not only would it be an interesting and safe way for students to express their creativity, but it would be a way to show how fun Mehlville is and all of the cool creative things we do around here!