A student athlete will walk by walls filled with lockers but they carry a backpack on their back and on their front. Even a non athlete carries a backpack weighed down with a Chromebook, binders, notebooks, books, supplies, lunch bag, and hygiene products.
Students today might be shocked to know that lockers were used prior to 2020. COVID made the administration reevaluate the need for students to use lockers especially with the new technology. Melanie Bosch has been head principal at OTMS for two years. Bosch was previously an assistant principal before taking her current position.
“When COVID took place and we couldn’t use lockers because of social distancing,” Bosch said. ”We have evolved, you guys don’t have textbooks, you have Chromebooks so there shouldn’t be a lot students have to carry around.”
Bosch believes that lockers shouldn’t be brought back at this moment because of how well things are going during passing time without them.
“We aren’t considering bringing them back because I feel like we’re being successful with how things are going,” Bosch said. “But it’s always a conversation we could have but currently we don’t have any plans to bring them back.”
David Beggs has been a teacher here at OTMS for 20 years. Beggs was one of the teachers who was around when lockers were still in use. He does have an opinion about the lockers.
“We don’t really need lockers anymore,” Beggs said. “In the winter it would be nice if kids could keep their coats somewhere, so I am mixed about this question.”
Sojay Sinthusy is a seventh grader on the Pathfinders team. Sinthusy was not prepared for lockers and was upset when she found out that they were no longer used.
“Fire Prairie did not prepare me for lockers,” Sinthusy said, “ I felt kind of annoyed when I found out we didn’t use them because I hate carrying my stuff around.”
Barrett Walker is an 8th grader on the Pioneer team. Walker is a quarterback for A team football. He uses the football locker room and says it is helpful. Walker believes it would be efficient to have locker space.
“Being able to bring your practice clothes or game wear and put it in the lockers in the locker room is nice because you don’t have to worry about carrying it or keeping track of it,” Walker said. “It is more organized for me to have them so I think it would be a similar thing with the hallway lockers.”
Students may wonder if it would be worth it to evaluate the decision to discard lockers, Beggs sums up why the school most likely will not.
“Lockers slow things down in the hallways, so I think that they make passing time more difficult,” Beggs said. “Also, some students really struggled with remembering their combos or they forgot how to correctly input their numbers. These issues often caused students to have more tardies.”
