Downey : Eliminating Student Lockers Reduces Theft, Schools Find

A pilot program to eliminate student lockers at two schools has reduced thefts and saved staff time, Downey Unified School District officials say. The district will encourage other schools to remove lockers but will not make it mandatory.

In the trial program begun last fall, administrators no longer assigned lockers to students at Downey High School and South Middle School. Instead, students were encouraged to use backpacks, which the schools provided free.

Those schools intend to make the change permanent, officials reported at a recent board meeting. The advantages include ending locker thefts, decreasing fights and congestion in the halls, and reducing tardiness and overdue library books. Employees no longer spend time opening, repairing and monitoring lockers, or worrying about students storing drugs or weapons in them.

The downside was finding safe places for personal belongings and ways to reduce the weight of materials that students carry. Administrators asked teachers to inform students in advance about which books they would need in class and to allow students to store backpacks in locked classrooms. Some teachers kept an extra set of books in the classroom so that students could leave their copies at home. Some lockers remained available for students who needed them for medical reasons.

“I think we all felt when we instituted this pilot program that we were obviously going to hear a lot of negative feedback from a lot of angry people,” board member Robert Riley said. “That has failed to materialize, which indicated a huge success.”