Every morning, students at Lumpkin County High School drive to a campus funded by the very taxes their families pay, only to be charged again with a $50 parking fee to access their public education. This is unfair; it’s a blatant double-dip by a school system already extracting an outrageous amount in property taxes from hard-working families across Georgia. In a county where many parents already struggle to afford necessities, charging teenagers to park at their own publicly funded school is an insult to working-class families and a punishment for poverty.

This fee is not about safety, it’s not about order—it’s about revenue. It’s a pay-to-play policy that cripples the autonomy of students, forcing them to either cough up cash or risk losing access to reliable transportation to and from school. Students should not have to choose between driving to school and helping their family make ends meet. And let’s be real, property taxes in Lumpkin County are already high enough. Forcing students to hand over more money on top of that is shameful.

This is a public institution, not a private parking lot. And in public institutions, the people are supposed to be in charge, not bureaucrats balancing budgets on the backs of students. This policy doesn’t reflect the values of freedom or fairness, and it certainly doesn’t reflect the values of the Lumpkin County community.

We, the undersigned students, parents, and concerned citizens, call on Principal Brian Matthews to immediately abolish the parking pass policy and stop punishing students simply for accessing the education that is rightfully theirs.