From a botched schedule to a new phone policy to the introduction of metal detectors, this school year has been anything but consistent. Though there are three months before we return to the building, administrators must plan a more stable school year before Aug. 20 – they owe it to students and staff.
Security practices this year dragged students down. Screening should have been implemented long before the string of violent and potentially violent incidents that occurred in September. The rushed and unexpected implementation of bag checks, wanding, bag searches and metal detection was problematic every step of the way. By now, we’ve settled into a routine of coming to school — but let’s not forget the random closings of certain entrances and freezing temperatures students had to wait in on Monday mornings, and ever-changing sensitivity settings on weapons detection that could pick up a quarter one day and turn a blind eye to a Chromebook the next. Next year, we need a consistent security policy that allows students to efficiently enter the school, get to class and stay safe.
On the topic of safety, security and police officers need to get it together. We’ve now had a former student die because of gun violence this year, at the hands of a current student. Security in this building must be more intensely focused and consistent than ever and constantly alert for a worst-case scenario. Instead, officers play games on their phones in the halls, so engrossed that they can be startled by someone walking purposefully. If students have to lock their phones up, security and police should, too. It’s too late to be having these conversations — but have them, anyway.
At the beginning of the school year, the ID policy was enforced consistently. Now, students walk the halls – and through security screening – without lanyards. Last year, two trespassers were arrested at the high school after entering through an unlocked north gym door, walking to the cafeteria and assaulting a student. Now, doors are regularly propped open with no one watching them. If trespassers are able to enter these doors — and nobody checks them for IDs — school safety is at risk.
Administrators should inform students when they issue suspensions and expulsions for violence. Otherwise, we’ll never know whether the person we saw viciously punching their peer is still walking around the halls. Students and families need transparency from the school district now more than ever: Tell us that people pay consequences for harming others and our feelings of safety.
Regardless of security, a school isn’t a school if no one knows where to go. The scheduling errors at the beginning of this year were unacceptable. The combination of the PowerSchool system and human error of administrators creating schedules was disastrous. Not every class was assigned a classroom, while other classes were scheduled in the same room at the same time; some teachers were given four classrooms to teach in for one day, all across the building; The Shakerite was assigned a room other than the newsroom; a version of the schedule was wrongly released to all students in June, showing that everyone was assigned A lunch; and when the schedule officially released, the system of four lunches had to be quickly changed to three while students and staff scrambled to figure out what was going on.
The administration has three months to get it together.
A version of this article appears in print on page 7 of Volume 95, Issue 5, published May 27, 2025.
