SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO : New Schools to Do Without Lockers

School lockers, which have increasingly become the targets of vandals and the storage place for student contraband, will not be included on two new campuses in the Capistrano Unified School District.

In a unanimous vote Monday, the Board of Trustees decided to eliminate lockers from Aliso Niguel High School and Aliso Viejo Middle School. The action does not affect lockers at existing schools.

“There are a lot of nuisances to having lockers,” district spokeswoman Jacqueline Price said. “There’s a lot of vandalism, particularly on the weekends. There are thefts, breaking of the locks, and students often forget their combinations.”

In the past five years, the district has spent more than $235,000 to repair lockers damaged by vandals, Assistant Supt. William F. Dawson told the board. The figure does not include costs to repair jammed or damaged lockers.

The district will save about $38,000 in construction costs alone by eliminating lockers from Aliso Niguel High School. Lockers were not included in preliminary plans for Aliso Viejo Middle School.

To ease the inconvenience to students, trustees agreed to spend an estimated $85,000 to buy duplicates of textbooks, allowing students to have one copy for classwork and another for use at home.

“They won’t have to carry them back and forth,” Price said.

Similar textbook policies have helped solve storage problems at other school districts where lockers have been phased out, officials said.

Board members said they would review the effectiveness of the new policy before deciding to extend it to other future intermediate schools and high schools in the district.