An average of 260 students buy parking passes each year at Portsmouth High School. This year alone, 415 students bought the small sticker that allows them to legally park at the school. At a rate of $150 a year, students should be aware of what happens to their money. The student council of PHS has a parking subcommittee that has discussed the topic of parking passes to a great extent in the presence of Mary Lyons.

“The district is required to provide transportation, but then some people choose to drive their cars, so it offsets transportation,” stated Mary Lyons. Of the average $40,000 a year the school collects by selling parking passes, none of it is kept by the school. “We can’t use the money for anything, we have to sort of turn it over. We can’t collect fees and keep it in school.”

After the money is collected, Lyons sends a check to the central office for the amount collected from driving students, and business director Steve Bartlett controls these funds from there. No matter how few students may be riding a certain bus, the bus is still required to be provided. Therefore, those who choose to be their own transportation by driving to school, are helping to pay for those who take the bus instead.

The accumulated money pays the bus costs of Portsmouth High School. However, these funds only cover a portion of the overall cost of school transportation. Last year, the cost of all the morning and afternoon buses was $724,487, not including the $251,635 in additional special needs, field trip and athletic transportation. Only $35,000 was gained from parking passes sold in 2016, covering only 3.6% of the schools bus costs.

According to Steve Bartlett, the cost of the schools transportation is going to go up 2.5% this year. The estimated $62,250 from parking passes in 2017, covers less than 5% of the cost to transport the rest of the students to school, and home again this year.