The Owatonna community members introduced a new high school project in Nov. 2019 to build a new Owatonna High School that would host a student body of 1,600. Beginning of the fall of 2023, OHS students and staff moved into the new building for a fresh start. With the donated facilities in use all year round, the most prominent aspect is the parking lot. Each and every day, OHS students enter and exit their school days by navigating the new parking lot. Whether the layout is effective or not, the purpose of the parking lot is dependent on how it is used, respected and made available.
Every day OHS students and facility members occupy the parking lot which is located at the front of the school. There is just one minor inconvenience and that is the entrances and exits of the lot. The school parking lot has only two entrances and exits which creates a problem for everyone including the parents who come and pick up their children from school at 2:50 p.m. Students, teachers and parents have to wait anywhere from 15 to 20 minutes after school in a massive line of cars just to get out of the parking lot which also includes buses which share the same entrances and exits as everyone else.
The school was designed by Wold Artchitects where they imagined a parking lot that would hold nearly 1,000 vehicles with only two entrances and exits. Senior Kenndy Katzung said, “I think the layout is okay, but it can make it extremely hard to get out some days if you don’t rush to your car and get out first.” This further proves that even though OHS has a very special and one-of-a-kind school, the parking lot layout could have been designed a different way for convenience of the OHS student body and others who associate with it. Now, the entrances and exits are not the only issues of the parking lot affecting the OHS body as a whole, but instead, the littering that has been occurring before, during and after school by many OHS students.
Owatonna High School principal Mr. Kory Kath said, “We noticed that there was some trash roaming around the parking lot and as a staff we came up with a plan to place trash cans around the parking lot, and we also are doing a Adopt-a-Lot to encourage cleaness around the facility.” The main concern is that it is a brand new facility and there is already a littering issue occurring due to students leaving for lunch and taking their lunch with or going out to get lunch and when they return they leave things on the sides of the vehicles and let things just fly all over the place without the concern or going to retract it and respecting it for them as a student and for the great community who made it possible for this to even happen.
Overall Owatonna High School is something special that the community as a whole came together to give to the whole community, but mainly the student body. The one big issue is that the parking lot could have been designed better so that students or anyone associated with it did not have to wait so long to leave or come in through. No matter what the size, let’s respect the parking and stop littering because making others pick up after you is not the correct way to respect a new facility.
