Painted Parking Spots Make Debut at AHS

Kaydee Pedersen

Junior Kyra Rink’s parking spot features a bee in honor of her middle name, Bea. Students at AHS are “buzzing” about her painting.

The newly painted parking spots have definitely made a splash at AHS. During the summer, AHS fuel offered students the opportunity to pay $25 for their own parking spot. AHS Fuel is a pep group that’s all about school spirit and tries to make school a more fun place to be. “We paid for some of the brushes, rollers, and paint but if you wanted to have a base color then you had to pay for your own paint,” said Fuel advisor Dan Vargason. They were able to buy the supplies from their AHS Fuel account, which is made up of money made from fundraisers. “We spent about $400 on supplies and only made $350 so we actually lost money,” said Vargason. If they would have made money it would’ve gone back into their AHS Fuel account. AHS Fuel plans on doing this again since people have been doing really well about not vandalizing them and if students want to do it again then they will. 

Videos all over Tik Tok were showing students from all over the country being able to paint their own parking spots and getting creative with it. When it finally hit AHS, students liked the results. Many students said that it “makes the parking lot so colorful.” Students with parking spots like how they “always have a parking spot close to the school.” The students loved how freely they were able to express themselves and get to be a little more involved at the same time. The only dislike was that they had to park in one spot whether they were good at parking or not. Freshman Makenna Schroeder said, “I loved the idea of painting parking spots. This makes mornings a lot less stressful since I know that I won’t have to worry about where to park. Considering I am a freshman and high school and driving are fairly new things for me, this was very helpful.” About 86% of the students that participated would do it again if they had the opportunity.

Students that don’t have painted parking spots haven’t had any effect by the placement of the spots as they usually park in the same spot or area every day. They do love the idea of it and the color looks nice in front of the school. One thing they wish could be changed is getting to be able to choose the spot they get to paint and not having to do it in the summer as most of them didn’t check their emails so they didn’t know about it.