A new school year comes with a lot of changes for the students and the staff. There have been new changes this year related to safety and classroom procedures for during the school day.

“Most of what we have changed or been focused on has been enhanced safety for our students and staff,” Valerie Payne said. “So not any big changes in any day-to-day [policies and codes have been made].”

The biggest change to how the school operates is that all doors on campus are locked from 7:55 a.m through 3:20 p.m. The only exclusions being doors students have to use in order to get around campus.

“My hope is that with the new bond in November we can get a new type of locking system that uses student ID badges,” Payne said. “[That way] students can use the doors they need to without them needing to be unlocked.”

Another change this year includes the addition of three new police officers: one upstairs, one in the office and one on patrol. This was done to further improve safety throughout the district.

“The locking of the doors around campus can be an inconvenience,” sophomore Ferris Turney said. “[But] it does make me feel a lot safer throughout the school day.”

The last change implemented this year is the incorporation of the cell phone pouches for all of the teachers to use. This was put in place to make sure students and teachers always know where their phones are throughout the day and to minimize classroom distractions.

“This year we would like all of teachers, for consistency sake, to have students to put their phones in the pouch when class starts,” Payne said. “It just helps the teacher not have to be watching each student, alleviates the nonsense of dealing with the phone. Either way, the rule says [the phones] aren’t to be seen throughout the school day.”