Doors Close on Lockers’ Problems at Junior Highs

Ninth-grader Lisa Peterson probably speaks for most, if not all, students when she says that lockers should be a part of secondary school life.

“It’s fun to have lockers,” says Peterson, a student at San Diego’s Roosevelt Junior High School.

But, for Peterson and her 1,000 classmates at Roosevelt--and for students at numerous other secondary schools around San Diego County--the fun of a locker experience is no more. Lockers are vanishing, becoming victims to vandalism, drugs and other social problems that have changed the pace and atmosphere of school life nationwide.

Secondary school principals increasingly are eliminating lockers in junior highs and middle schools. Thus, their students must carry belongings back and forth from home, and from class to class, in backpacks or book bags. (Junior high typically includes grades seven through nine, and middle school typically has grades six through eight.)

More than half the junior high schools in the San Diego Unified School District have eliminated their lockers, along with several in various North County districts, some in the La Mesa-Spring Valley district to the east, and some in the Sweetwater district in South County.

“It’s a sign of the times,” said Elizabeth Allen, vice principal at Mar Vista High School in Imperial Beach. Mar Vista has boarded up its locker bays. “When I was going to school, you did what you were told, what was expected of you, much more than what is going on now. You didn’t have the serious problems of damage, and lost books, and drugs that you’ve got now with a different population.”

The closing of lockers is not unanimous: Several principals who still provide them say closing locker bays is not worth the inconvenience it would cause for students.

But the trend, both locally and nationwide, is toward locker elimination.

“It’s one of the best ideas in education,” said Robert Quon, principal of Marston Middle School in Clairemont, one of the first schools in the county to eliminate lockers when it made the move three years ago. “It eliminates a lot of theft, it eliminates vandalism, it eliminates a gossip center, it helps eliminate contraband stashed in lockers, like drugs, and it eliminates tardiness by eliminating the excuse so often used, that a student couldn’t get a locker open, or whatever, so that gets classes going sooner.”

Many principals have bought extra sets of textbooks for their classrooms, allowing students to keep one set at home during the school year without having to lug all their books back and forth every day.

“That has eliminated the excuse for not doing homework because someone forgot a book,” said Jim Zoll, principal at Coronado Middle School. “The kids are now in class on time, with their books, ready for instruction.” And theft of backpacks is rarely a problem, Zoll and others say, because kids have no desire to risk detention for stealing just a book.

Joseph Tafoya, principal of Wilson Middle School in East San Diego, shut down his lockers four years ago after a weekend locker theft, the 287th during his time at Wilson.

“That was it as far as I was concerned,” Tafoya said. “Our lockers were on the outside of the building and subject to simply too much vandalism. I talked to the PTA, some other community groups, and then wrote a letter to parents saying we were closing the lockers down.”

While vandalism was the original reason for Tafoya and other principals to act, the other benefits have turned out to be far greater than anticipated, they say.

“I see a lot less fisticuffs now,” said Walter Romanowski, principal at Lewis Junior High in Allied Gardens. “With a 12-foot-wide, 30-foot-long hallway with 240 lockers crowded in it, there was a lot of congestion, with seventh-graders sometimes afraid they were going to get pounded on and not wanting even to get into their lockers.”

Barbara Thomas, principal at Roosevelt, added: “We didn’t have enough lockers for each student to have his or her own, and with upper and lower lockers, every time someone dropped a book on the person below them, the student would think it was on purpose and you’d end up with shoving and fighting.”

Romanowski said that one of his vice principals regularly spent 1 1/2 to 2 hours daily dealing with locker problems, such as forgotten combinations, damage from vandalism, or lost and stolen books.

“From a school administrator’s point of view, it’s been terrific,” said Maruta Gardner, principal of Horace Mann Middle School. “I wish high schools would do it too. But it’s difficult to implement because of student and community pressures.”

Roosevelt Principal Thomas said that parent and student complaints over closing the lockers have never completely ended even after the inevitable furor at the start dissipated. Romanowski said that parents romanticize about the days when they went to school, waxing nostalgic about lockers while forgetting that drugs and weapons posed no problems then.

“I’m not saying that we still don’t have problems--I don’t have my head in the sand--but I do think that we have tended to move some of the problems off campus,” Romanowski said.

Even students admit that, as unwelcome as locker elimination was, it has cut down on contraband.

“In my opinion, sure, there’s less (drugs and knives) now,” said ninth-grader Scott Jackson of Roosevelt. “Without a locker, you might get caught easier now.”

Jackson added, “We’ve gotten used to it now, but at the time, everyone said that we should protest, but we knew there was no way to get the lockers back.”

While almost all principals say that lockers cause administrative headaches, not all have been willing to end the privilege.

“I know that most of my cohorts are driven crazy by lockers, but I am still fighting the good fight,” said Michael Lorch, principal of Correia Junior High in Point Loma.

“Of my students, 47% are minority, bused in for magnet (special) programs and the like,” Lorch said. “They travel long distances, and some of the little guys (seventh-graders) are carrying 25 or 30 pounds of books back and forth.

“And I feel that having to fill out locker cards, buy a lock, teaches them responsibility and gives them some independence.”

Russell Vowinkel took command of De Portola Middle School in Tierrasanta when it opened this year. “I have 580 lockers and I use them, “ he said. “They require careful supervision, and we’re committed to that. Without giving the kids a chance to take care of the lockers and understand that they are a convenience, I’m not about to close them down.”

While problems of tardiness and fights occur at Pershing Junior High in San Carlos, Principal Russell Hassett does not believe they warrant taking lockers away from his students.

“I think I serve my community better by keeping them,” he said, adding that he cannot justify buying an extra set of books for all his classrooms should he eliminate lockers at a time of tight school district budgets.

Hassett said that his students also know that classmates at other schools, such as neighboring Lewis, have lost their lockers. “I think that makes students more responsible in cutting down on (problems),” he said.

But even these principals concede that the future points in the opposite direction.

The Grossmont Union High School District still provides lockers at its nine high schools, having chosen not to rip out or board up existing bays, James King, assistant superintendent, said.

But its 10th high school, now being built in Santee, will not have lockers.

“Basically, there are good rationales for eliminating lockers, and when you have a chance to build a new school, you can educate the student body to the new situation,” King said.