NPHS students protest Borchard Park parking lot
As of Thursday, March 6, students are no longer permitted to park in the Borchard Park parking lot, and violators will be ticketed and towed. This change was a result of reckless driving within the lot, specifically regarding an incident on Wednesday, March 5, where a parent and two toddlers were nearly hit. The closing of the parking lot has led to a protest amongst NPHS students.
Borchard Park acts as a space for a variety of classes and programs available for a wide range of ages, so foot traffic maintains a consistent flow. Kurt Gunning, a supervisor with the Conejo Recreation and Park District, works at and runs activities at Borchard Park. “I have to balance the parking needs and safety of those participants with parking needs of students,” Gunning said. The deal between Newbury Park High School and Borchard Park designated over 100 available spots to students, each marked with green paint. “There has been an arrangement for at least ten years…Over the course of that time we have made changes to the allotted spots due to things like construction projects and events,” Gunning said.
Along with the deal, NPHS staff agreed to help with monitoring the parking and driving habits of students. “NPHS and the [Ventura County Sheriff’s Office] School Resource Officer both helped us with regulating the parking lot to some degree,” Gunning said. However, due to not enough regulation, irresponsible driving became quite common in the parking lot, this being the primary reason for it being closed to students. “In the last year, reckless driving has dramatically increased to a point where we are seeing incidents daily, sometimes multiple incidents daily,” Gunning said.
As a counter to the shutting of the lot, students are attempting to fight for its reopening. Jeremy Rowell, senior, started the student protest. After parking at Borchard for two years, he finds the removal of students from the lot to be unfair, as the perpetrator in the March 5 incident was found to not be a Newbury Park High School student. “[The person is] not getting punished by this rule of closing the lot. Instead, everyone else, except for this guy, is getting punished, including local businesses and residences who now have students parking in their parking spots,” Rowell said. There is a petition for students to sign to reopen the lot if they agree, linked in the bio of the “nphsbadparking” account on Instagram. Rowell also plans to attend an upcoming school board meeting in protest.
As of this moment, Borchard Park is up to discussions about reopening the lot. “If we do choose to reopen the lot, there would need to be changes made to how it is operating to ensure the safety of park patrons. We are certainly open to the idea and the conversation,” Gunning said.
