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Students to carry on without lockers
By ROBERT KING © St. Petersburg Times, published February 28, 2001 The hallway locker -- a mainstay of high school life for generations and frequently a repository of everything from textbooks and band instruments to love notes and contraband -- will be missing from Hernando County's newest high school. Tizzy Schoelles, picked as the first principal of Nature Coast Technical High School, decided last week to omit hallway lockers from the design of the school, which is scheduled to open in 2003. In short, Schoelles said students will not need hallway lockers. That's because she's planning to use block scheduling, where kids have only three classes a day. Most kids will make do each day with two or three books that they can carry with them. Eliminating corridor lockers will save $125,000 in a construction budget that's expected to top $34-million. But there will be lockers in some areas of the school -- the gymnasium, vocational labs where students will need a change of clothes and band and chorus rooms. Lockers, for being a simple storehouse for student supplies, generate lots of debate. Some argue that lockers create traffic jams in already crowded hallways when students -- who may share their space with two or three other students -- squat, crouch or lean into them during passing times. Schoelles says lockers slow kids down in their effort to get to class on time, are frequently used by kids as an excuse to get out of class and become black holes for lost or stolen items. There is also concern that lockers can be a hiding place for such things as drugs and guns. Those who favor lockers say kids who want to bring guns or drugs will simply carry them into the classroom via book bags if lockers are unavailable. And they contend law-abiding students might suffer back and shoulder problems if they must become scholastic pack mules. The county's middle schools are good examples of the debate: West Hernando and Parrott no longer use their hallway lockers. Fox Chapel and Powell middle schools allow locker use, but on a restricted basis. High school students in the county now use their lockers freely even at crowded schools such as Springstead and Central, where officials say locker problems are few. Hernando High's experience is a little different. The bulk of its lockers are outdoors, attached to classroom buildings. In the light of day, supervision is easier, and traffic bottlenecks are not an issue, said assistant principal Jane Padgett. Schoelles, who will leave her job at Suncoast Elementary next year to begin preparing for Nature Coast Tech's debut, doesn't consider two or three books too burdensome for high schoolers. "That's not too much to ask a healthy teenager," she said. "The bottom line is they need to be in class and be prepared to learn for the entire time they are there." Despite the absence of lockers, the new school's hallways will be built wide enough to allow for lockers to be added if future principals deem it necessary.
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