A student wakes up at 7 a.m. and quickly brushes her hair and throws on some sweats. She grabs her keys and heads out the door and into her car. As she drives through Wootton Parkway and hits the Scott Dr. intersection, she sees the usual pile up of cars stretching all the way down the street. Because of the traffic to get into the school parking lot, the student ends up parking and getting out of her car at 7:50 a.m., five minutes late to first period.
As she walks up to the main entrance, there is a line of people out the doors, barely moving. She waits in this line for around 15 minutes until she even makes it inside. She then is told to go to a computer and find her first period teacher on the sign in. After doing all of this, the student doesn’t make it into her first period until 8:10 a.m., missing now 25 minutes of instruction instead of just five minutes.
With multiple violent threats made to the school in the past two years, security has been increased. The mandated IDs for all policy was implemented on Oct. 30. Since then, when entering school students must show their ID to a faculty member or security guard to verify they go to the school. This policy prevents non-students from entering the building. Senior Josie Spicer has strong opinions on the heightened security policies. “I think it is great to finally see real change in the school especially when it comes to security. I’ve lost count of the amount of threats made to the school in the years I’ve been here. It was also way too easy for someone to enter our school before these mandates were set into place,” Spicer said.
Exterior doors (every door but the main office doors) are locked at 7:45 a.m., and after that time, students are only allowed to enter through the main entrance. Students are not allowed to prop doors open or let anyone in through doors after 7:45 a.m.. One of the more controversial policies set into place is that instead of just making students show their ID in the morning if they are late, they also make students go through a computer system.
There are usually around four computers set up in the main office and each student has to enter their first period teacher and put in their school ID or scan their physical one to validate them as a student. The issue with this policy is that it is time consuming, “There are usually a lot of students that come into school within the first five minutes of the start of first period because of traffic or whatever it may be, so if you happen to be one of those students, the line to sign in becomes a long wait,” junior Nigel Gbekie said.
According to security guard Jay Gabele, “The sign in policy in the morning helps teachers know that a student is not absent, but just running late,” Gabele said.
