Wednesday, Oct. 4, during 3R, a mother of a Smoky Hill High School student rushed into Activities – unchecked and unspoken to by security –  to yell at a student. Junior Chrisondra Rogers was in the hall when it all went down, and said, “The whole event started with what was almost a fight between two students, which then escalated into the mom of one of the students telling her to bring her mom so she could whoop her ass.”

First of all, why do kids feel like they need to fight at school?  More importantly, how is it appropriate for a parent to get involved?

When that mom came in the building, the closest adult in the situation was Scott Cohen who was there to stop the girls from fighting. After the mom yelled at the student near StarBuffs, she walked out of Activities into the math hallway without being contacted or spoken to by any security personnel.

The fact that this can happen in our school, that a non-student could have such quick access to the inside of our building where a large group of students are gathered, makes me question the security practices at Smoky.

The article “16 Steps to Better School Front Entrance Security,” by Randy Atlas, Jim Grayson, and Stephan Hoban, states that, “when classes begin, the front office should be the only point of entrance or exit from the campus. All of the other doors should be closed or locked.” We do not do that at Smoky Hill. There are two different places you can enter, Activities, and the Main Entrance, which takes away from the amount of security we have at our school entrances.

After interviewing Smoky’s  principal Chuck Puga and head of security Alicia Armour, Puga said, “The security at Smoky is like walking on a tightrope.” He doesn’t want kids to feel unsafe, but he also doesn’t want students to feel like they’re on lockdown because that is just not fair to us as students and would create a look at Smoky that he doesn’t want to create.

At the end of the day, I believe that Smoky is a safe place and I would like to keep it that way. I believe that as a school we need to begin locking all entrances into the school except the Main Entrance as soon as the bell rings. I believe this will help, because it forces everyone who enters the school to be either a student or a parent who has been accounted for. But, safety at Smoky isn’t just the job of the administration. Every day kids let other kids in locked entrances around our school or try to prop open the doors. If we continue to do this, it won’t matter what doors the administration locks or doesn’t. We can all do better to keep Smoky safe.