Pro: Schools should stop parent drop-offs to improve safety
October 12, 2015
On Friday October 2, 2015, 27 parents came in to the LHS office to drop off homecoming dance money and other items to students. Over a week, the secretaries in the front office recorded how many parents came in and what they brought. There was an average of 22 parents each day.
Twenty-two people walking into this school, unannounced, each day is a lot of people.
In Summit County, New Jersey ,the Board of Education put a new policy in place to cut down the amount of traffic in the office. For a few years this policy has worked even though some parents and most students dislike the policy.
This policy has the potential to provide many positive outcomes to the schools and should be considered in Frederick County.
After high school we will be responsible for ourselves and our mistakes. Some of our mistakes won’t be fixed as easy as a phone call. Let’s practice that responsibility now.
Junior Ryan Jongezoon thinks the policy makes sense. He believes it would help with safety issues and “less chance of concealed weapons being brought in.”
From a parent’s point of view, Mrs. Tracey Cassidy, Reading Specialist, has two teens who go to school in Howard County. She thinks the New Jersey policy is flawed, but it could be a positive thing if parents and teachers worked together. “Students over time would be more responsible.”
High school students may not like the idea of not being able to ask their parents to bring anything in, but over a period of time, it can help us prepare for life outside of school. We won’t be able to text or call our parents if we forgot our lunches or note cards for an important presentation.
Considering the number of parents who work a distance from home, only a percentage of students have access to call parents anyway. What about my parents, who work over an hour away? They aren’t likely to be very happy if I text them crying over lunch money.
Oviedo High School, in Oviedo Florida, gives what they call a “grace period” where in the first few weeks of school they accept unplanned drop-offs. Their no drop-off policy has been in place for six years. They did not like the way the office looked like a locker room; it was constantly full of sports equipment and such.
Oviedo High School Officials believes that since teenagers use their phones for everything, that students should place reminders on their phones rather than using them to call mom and dad.
According to the article about this policy the parents and students aren’t mad about it anymore. They have gotten used to it and now they have the responsibility to remind themselves not to forget anything.
