Two local high schools ditch lockers
Posted on Thursday, November 20, 2008
High school lockers often represent more than just a place to store books and materials between classes.
The locker is a place where boys ask girls on dates, students meet up with each other and plans are made.
It can also provide a place where students can develop interior decorating skills, and many plot-propelling scenes in high school movies take place at lockers in the school hallways.
At two Washington County high schools, however, student life is different. Greenland and Prairie Grove high schools do not provide lockers for their students.
“ I believe any school that wanted to do this could. It’s just a matter of commitment, ” Prairie Grove Principal Ron Bond said.
“ Some people are a little surprised, but overall, we haven’t had complaints about it, ” Greenland Principal Hope Dorman said.
Granted, without the lockers for storage some adjustments have been made so students are not stuck carrying books for all classes every day.
“ We have classroom sets of textbooks. The students are issued textbooks (for home ) at the beginning of the year, so they don’t have to carry their textbooks, ” Bond said. “ Pretty much all they have to carry is paper, notebook, whatever they choose to carry. ”
Prairie Grove does spend more on textbooks than other schools might, Bond said. Each classroom has a set of textbooks students use in the room, and the students have a set they keep at home. The school also purchases some extra textbooks for the library.
“ It is an investment, ” he said. “ At this point, the positives outweigh the negatives. ”
Greenland Superintendent Roland Smith said the lockers were taken out before he started working for the district.
“ This is the first district that I’ve been in that had a high school that didn’t have lockers, ” Smith said.
He said he has noticed a few things that are different from other places he has worked.
“ The differences would include, one, a reduction in some noise, ” Smith said. “ You would not have the question of whether there were any substances stored in lockers that should not be stored. ”
Bond said there are advantages to not having lockers • Less clutter and more space in the hallways • Reduced noise because the hallways to not feature the sounds of lockers opening and closing • Fewer opportunities for students to store items they are not allowed to have on school grounds Some students take backpacks from class to class but that is up to them, Bond said. He said he doesn’t believe the storage of coats or jackets is much of an issue.
“ Most of the jackets, they hang them on the back of their chairs or whatever. We don’t have any set of coatracks or cubbys or anything like that, ” Bond said. “ Most of the kids walk in the building at 7: 50, and they never walk out of the building. They’re indoors in an enclosed environment. ”
Dorman said not having a space to store a jacket does not seem to be an issue at Greenland High, either.
There are also fewer discipline problems, Bond said, because many conflicts between students start in locker areas.
He believes the benefits of less noise and disruption make not having lockers worthwhile.
“ What has happened is our halls are open and we have very little congestion, ” Bond said. “ Our halls are almost clutter free. You just don’t have that space taken up with a locker. ”
“ It’s nice because the hallways aren’t as crowded and cluttered up, ” Dorman said.
Prairie Grove is in its fifth year at the current high school facility and has not had lockers since the school moved.
Bond recalled the old campus was more spread out. There were cases when students did not have time to return to their lockers during class changes because of the distances between rooms.
Another advantage has been not having to address complaints about items being stolen from lockers, Dorman said.
Even without a locker destination, students still seem to find moments to socialize and visit with friends during the four-minute break between classes at Greenland High.
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