Threatening to tow students’ illegally parked cars will become the new normal for parking violations on into the spring, according to vice principal Amy Winston.

Winston said that the school hasn’t been towing cars  during COVID due to staffing limitations. “In a normal school year, we tow cars, that’s a normal strategy,” she added.

The school will expand supervision of staff parking lots in the future to ensure that students are not taking up spaces, according to Winston.

“The faculty have stepped up their monitoring, so what happens now, when faculty see students, they send me a picture of the license plate and then we run the plates to find out who the student is,” she said. “In general, we try to give students one warning before we call the tow trucks. And we keep track of students that we’ve had  to talk to more than once.”

On Jan. 31, snow blocked many parking spaces around the school. According to Winston, this motivated many students to park illegally in the staff parking lots.

Dean Scott Heslin added that, even though only a few students parked illegally, the issue was exacerbated by parking spots in the lots being taken up by snow and snow-clearing equipment.

“We lost dozens of parking spots for that day specifically,” he said.

Junior Emily Zhu, who was asked by Heslin to move her car during a-block to avoid it being towed, said that she missed essentially the entire class during the time it took her to find a new parking spot and walk back to the school from there.

Zhu said, “From the students’ view, it was very overboard, like they could have toned it down.”

While Heslin said he understands that it is important for students to be able to park, but the school needs to prioritize teachers.

“We can’t teach if there’s no teacher. So that’s why we have the parking rules in the first place,” said Heslin.