Another casualty of school security concerns: school lockers. [View all]

[pnwmom]

Some people have wondered why Ahmed, the clock-building 14 year old, didn't have his clock safety tucked away in his locker.

Aside from the likelihood that its beeping would have drawn suspicion anyway, even in a locker, the fact is that many schools have eliminated school lockers in favor of making kids lug heavy backpacks through all their classes.

They think everyone's safer that way.



http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/lifestyle/2011/11/going-lockerless-why-more-and-more-schools-are-eliminating-lockers/

The locker can represent many things for high school students: a center of social interaction, a means of self-expression, that one little area of school that is wholly and entirely theirs. At its most basic, the locker is a storage unit, a place for students to keep books and other supplies so that they don’t have to lug heavy backpacks to school everyday. And yet in many schools the locker is quickly becoming a thing of the past.

There are many reasons for its elimination, according to Ronnie McGehee, interim superintendent of the Madison County School District in Mississippi, where many of the schools are going lockerless. The first benefit, says Dr. McGehee, is in student safety. Eliminating lockers alleviates concern “that students were putting things in there that they shouldn’t,” such as weapons or drugs.