With ADM students coming from a wide radius of surrounding areas, transportation to and from school has become a greater issue. In order to qualify for the school bus service, students must live at least three miles away from the school. As a result, many students who don’t meet this requirement have started driving themselves to school. Unfortunately, due to the recent increase in the high school population, the parking lot has become more congested, complicating how high school students get to school.

Addison Kuonen, a senior at ADM High School, uses her car for many different things.

“I live in Earlham, and I work in Des Moines. This means my drive home is about twenty-five minutes long, while my drive to work is twenty-five minutes from Adel, but thirty-five from my house. I am in a lot of activities and I wouldn’t be able to do them if I didn’t have a car to take me here.”

Before she could drive, Kuonen was dropped off at school by her mother.

“My mom would drive me to school and drop me off at the pit in my freshman year. I was often late because my mom and brother sometimes weren’t ready in time.”

Being allowed to drive to school has allowed her to avoid this daily morning chaos and become a more independent young adult.

“Driving allows me to just kind of be independent.  If I need something from a store, I can drive myself there and pick it up quickly instead of having to get a ride from somebody. I feel a lot more independent being able to drive because I don’t have to ask my parents to take me places,” Kuonen shared.

Junior Devin Baker uses his car for similar reasons.

“I use my car to go to work, school, home and out with friends,” Baker listed.

While Baker shared that he lives close enough to the school that he could theoretically walk, he says his life has gotten better since he was able to drive.

“If I didn’t have my car, my way to school would be a lot longer. I’d wake up about half an hour to an hour earlier. Since I also work out of Adel, I would not be able to get to work at all. I’d have to quit.”

When asked, both students said that they are reliant on their cars. Because of this modern reliance on singular transportation due to the wide sprawl of Iowa’s rural areas, more and more students are having to drive themselves to work, school or activities. While this allows students to be independent, their dependence on cars is making current ADM infrastructure overwhelmed.

“Everybody’s always fighting for spots,” Kuonen remarked. “You have to get here really early to even get a senior spot if you are a senior. I also know a lot of kids will park in parking spots that they’re not supposed to. They get in trouble for this even though there’s not enough parking for all of the seniors in the senior lot, let alone for all of the other grades that park there too.”

Baker agreed that the current parking lot at ADM High School is becoming overcrowded due to the increasing number of drivers.

“I am searching for a spot all the time and that so-called senior lot does not have enough spots at all.”

He also exclaimed his frustration with leaving school due to the tight traffic stream.

“The parking lot is jammed with the people who keep moving the cones that block off some of the exits,” Baker said. “That makes it all crowded and jammed and people don’t know when they are supposed to turn.”

To fix the problems in the parking lot regarding traffic, Baker recommends that the school place stricter restrictions on where students can exit the parking lot. He also mentioned a way for the school to create more parking spots to accommodate the population growth.

“In the front parking lot, I think they could use a different type of drainage system so that they could expand that parking spot area and add more spots,” he suggested. “They could also do something with the pit so that it’s not so bad out there. We shouldn’t just keep filling it up with more gravel and hoping it gets better when it won’t.”

While Kuonen wasn’t positive about how the parking lot could be improved for everyone, she shared an idea that would be a reward for the seniors.

“I think it would be nice to have designated parking spots. At other schools, they do something where you buy a spot and then you can paint it over the summer so you have your own spot for the school year. I think that would be really nice for seniors since they’ve been here four years and I think they deserve that,” suggested Kuonen.

ADM students use their cars for various purposes, but transportation to and from school is the most common one. As they gain more independence, they also have more responsibilities that require driving. As a result, the already crowded high school parking lots are becoming even more congested. Many ADM students rely heavily on their cars, and they believe that schools should accommodate this dependence so that they can continue to utilize their vehicles.

“If I couldn’t drive my car,” Kuonen declared, “I  don’t know what I would do.”