The Revere School Committee is looking to enact uniform parking policies at all the city’s public schools.
Last week, its buildings and grounds subcommittee approved a policy that would allow only staff and school business-related parking in school parking lots from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.
The full school committee will take up the request at its next regular meeting later this month.
If approved by the committee, signs will be posted in the parking lots stating that vehicles will be towed at the vehicle owner’s expense if there is a violation. The signs will also note that there is no parking allowed at all in the parking lots during snow events.
The signs will be similar to ones that were previously approved by the city’s traffic and parking commission.
However, building and grounds subcommittee chair Stephen Damiano noted that recent information from City Solicitor Paul Capizzi stated that the parking lots are school property and the parking regulations can be determined by the school department and do not need approval from the city’s traffic and parking commission.
Damiano said the root of the problem has been from residents using the parking lots early in the morning, creating issues for school staff looking for spots.
“I noticed that no two schools have the same restrictions or allowances, so everything is kind of all over the place,” said Damiano. “Hopefully, from this discussion, what we can get out of this is a unified plan to bring back to the whole committee.”
Superintendent of Schools Dr. Dianne Kelly said there are different levels of concern in different places based on where schools are located and the density of the neighborhood and the size of the parking lot.
“I’ll use the Garfield (Elementary) as an example, because they are in a very dense neighborhood where there’s not a lot of parking; but they don’t have a parking lot, they have a small one out back, but it’s not enough to make a big difference,” said Kelly. “The Hill School and the Paul Revere are two other schools that are in very densely populated neighborhoods, but they have full-on parking lots. A problem that we have had in the last several years is that staff will come to work in the morning, and there are no parking spots because there are members of the community that have parked there overnight.”
Several subcommittee members and school officials noted that the schools want to be good neighbors and not necessarily tow cars on the first offense of the policy, but target repeat offenders who use spots in the parking lots, particularly early in the morning.
Damiano also raised the possibility of posting that the school lots could be used for permit parking only for Revere residents from midnight to 6 a.m., but that was not included in the final recommendation to the full school committee.
The subcommittee members said they also wanted to ensure that the parking lots are available for anyone who wanted to park for an official school event, such as PTA meetings, school performances, and athletic events.