Only 35 students showed up without an ID badge to enter the building through the main, auditorium and lower cafeteria doors on Monday, the first day of a new ID policy.
For the first time in school history, students had to display a school ID, which they have been required to wear on lanyards since February, in order to enter school. Students must now present their ID badge to security, with their ID photo visible, before entering.
Those who arrived without an ID badge were directed to the lower cafeteria, where they waited to be issued replacement badges. All students without IDs were marked late for school. According to an email update Principal Eric Juli sent to staff yesterday morning, those students were eventually dismissed to class “over the last few minutes.”
In the same update, Juli said that throughout the day, security staff and administrators would gather any student seen without an ID badge and bring them to Fresh Start.
According to Assistant Principal Lisa Demkowicz, Fresh Start is the equivalent of in-school suspension for students who don’t comply with instruction to wear their IDs. In Fresh Start, students are sent to a room where they miss “plenty of class,” she said.
“If you are choosing not to follow the rules, either with IDs or technology, you will be asked to go to Fresh Start,” Demkowicz said.
At Fresh Start, Juli wrote, students would be asked to put on their IDs. If they refuse, “We will contact the students’ parent/guardian and let them know they are refusing to wear their ID Badge. Students who put their badge on will be returned to class. Students who refuse, will be emergency removed [from school]”.
“We inconvenienced students this morning; they were not happy with waiting or walking around the building while they didn’t have their IDs, and that waiting process made them very upset, so I think they will be more apt to wear their IDs” in the future, Demkowicz said.
Juli described the new ID policy in a video sent to all students Friday, May 3. “We will hold all students without IDs in the lower cafeteria, where we will determine next steps, including but not limited to: printing out a backup ID and sending the student to class, sending the student to in-school suspension, contacting the student’s family for ID delivery or for student pickup,” Juli said.
“For students already wearing their ID badge around their neck upon arrival at the school entrance— and this is most of our students– we believe there will be no delay entering the school building. For students who can’t locate their ID, have it in their backpack or don’t have it on a lanyard, there will absolutely be a delay getting into the building,” Juli said.
This year is also the first year in which seniors are required to turn in their student IDs to sign out for senior project.
Demkowicz said that wearing an ID is not too much to ask from students, given that many schools require students to wear uniforms.
Said Demkowicz, “Think about it this way: Do you want uniforms, or do you want IDs?”
Isabel Siegel contributed reporting.
