Parents and carers of students attending Manor Lakes College are preparing a petition to present to council to find a solution for the school’s parking problem.
Lead petitioner Nadee Ranathungamage said the reckless driving and lack of sufficient parking spaces needs to be addressed.
“This is an observation of what’s happening at the rush hour, lots of people, including myself, want to drop children off where it is safe and where you can see that the children go inside the school for safety reasons, but there isn’t enough parking,” she said.
Ms Ranathungamage would like to see a team of traffic experts visit the school and analyse the situation.
“This is a petition to get them to investigate what’s happening and take notes and come up with an outcome,” she said.
Manor Lakes College principal Steve Warner said while he didn’t know about the petition, he understands parents’ frustrations.
Mr Warner said the lack of street parking in the vicinity of the school is further exacerbated by commuters accessing the nearby Wyndham Vale train station, who take up spots in the street when the station parking is oversubscribed.
“The solution comes back to parents being prepared to park away from the school. In 25 years as a principal I’m yet to see a large number of parents choose that option,” he said
For parents with kids who have disabilities or mobility issues, a designated car park with about 30 parking spaces is available, but not always sufficient.
“We know that we don’t have enough passes available for parents with mobility issues, we do what we can we basically just try to manage the resources available.”
Ms Ranathungamage said she understands the school can’t accommodate a parking spot for every family and, while walking can be an option for some parents, it isn’t a reasonable solution for all.
“I have three kids and usually I walk the other two and carry the baby. Not everybody has help in the morning to get everybody ready, so we are already in a race in the morning,” she said.
“Even though the theory suggests that everybody does the right thing (parks away from the school and walks), that’s not what happens and that puts children and the walkers at risk.”
