It is the end of the school day: tests are done, teachers are heading home, friends part ways for a short time before seeing each other the next day. All things seem as they should be. That is, until a thousand students flock to their cars in a mad dash to escape the mania we call the student parking lot.

Ah, the student parking lot, a place where pedestrians never seem to have the right of way and where all patience flies out the window into the hot desert air.

Anyone who has experienced this mad dash knows that nothing is worse than extra cars in the parking lot. After all, more cars means more competition for the opportunities to get out of a parking space, and into areas of more civilized driving. Many may ask why there would be “extra” cars in the parking lot. The answer, unfortunately, has nothing to do with the students of whom the lot is named after.

The problem is the parents who line the parameter of the area like the ozone layer, compressing the core and controlling all who want to escape.

To say PHS has grown in its nine years would be a gross understatement. I hear legends from teachers that once upon a time the student parking lot was a spacious garden of open real estate; now parent vehicles congest the grounds before, as well as the after school pick up in both the student and staff lot (by the library).

Principal Dan Serrano defended the parents, saying that “most people don’t like to hear this, but if every single parent went to the student drop off and pick up, we wouldn’t be able to function over there [because] it is too busy.”

But it is busy all around, and with limited exits on either end of the property, the problems are constant. Traffic jams and accidents are inevitable in such a crowded area, let alone in an area full of first- and second-year drivers.

Recently, administration and school security were forced to close off the exit between the pool and the Bus Barn, one of the few precious exits from the student lot on account of safety concerns.

“We found out the other day that when you go between the pool and the bus barn, it is a two way road, but kids are going down both sides, and when the buses are lined up, they go out that way and these kids were going on the wrong side of the road,” Serrano said.

“So what we have done is closed that gate so [students] can’t [go out that way]. Someone is [bound] to get killed that way.”

Serrano stated that the solution to the problem is not one of logistics, but one of timeliness.

“I tell parents and my own kids, you have to be at school before 7am, because after 7 a.m., it gets crazy. Come pick your kid up at 2:40 p.m. because it really calms down.”

By arriving a little earlier in the morning and leaving a little later in the afternoon, everyone would benefit with fewer cars to battle. Parents would not have to deal with inexperienced drivers and take the chance of getting in an accident by simply coming later.

In this case, everybody wins.