Waking to the sound of crashing raindrops at the dawn of September 29th, SHS seniors and teachers were alerted by frantic messages and emails about limited parking. Ducks took a swim in the gravel lot while students scrambled to make arrangements. While students were advised to carpool or get dropped off to avoid taking up staff parking spots, some seniors and juniors continued to park on Brewster Road. As for the teachers, their parking was dwindling by the minute. 

After the flooding of the Brewster Road drop-off circle bridge, the drop-off options became Wayside Lane, the Dean field lot, or the Post Road lot; this disruption in flow led to a lot of morning tardies, made permissible by a later loud-speaker announcement. All those entering the building looked like they had taken an unwanted swim with the ducks, with dripping hair and drenched clothes. 

As the day proceeded, more and more announcements were made, alerting teachers of additional flooding and warning those who parked in certain areas to move their cars away from the flooding. By third period, announcements were made nearly every five minutes. Finally, around 10:40 a.m., Principal Kenneth Bonamo notified students and teachers of an early dismissal at 11 a.m., advising students to contact their parents to coordinate a safe pick-up spot. At this time, only the Post Road side of the building was available for pick-up, with all other entrances blocked by extreme flooding. Students quickly rose from their seats to retrieve their phones from the phone caddies, dialing their parents while looking at the flooding school out the windows. Teachers frantically moved their cars, hoping to avoid complete entrenchment, while nearly the entire student body awaited their parents’ arrival at the Post Road entrance. 

The brook had engulfed nearly all parking lots and even some picnic tables. By the time most students could be picked up by their parents, the roads had also started to flood, leaving students with soaked shoes. Each passing car formed what looked like a wave crashing onto the sides of the streets, splashing water onto unlucky students running home. 

Students who drove faced a similar problem. “I had to park on Hampton Road in the morning because the lots were flooded, and I got drenched walking to my car after school,” Alina Zhang ’24 said. Most students also endured a much longer car ride than usual to arrive at their dry homes due to various roads being blocked with flooding. 

The day’s chaotic events highlighted the school’s inconvenient parking arrangements, where the brook’s frequent overflows led to the inevitable flooding of parking lots. With a similar school closure happening back in 2021 and a number of rainy days requiring students and teachers to move their cars during classes, is the school making proper adjustments to ensure that future events like this are not as drastic?