Hall passes hard to miss

Students at Rogers High School will never have to worry about leaving a hall pass behind in the bathroom again.

In an effort to heighten security on campus, students at the northeast Spokane school are now required to wear fluorescent orange traffic safety vests any time they are in the halls while classes are in session.

In addition, Rogers students will be required to wear or to have with them new identification badges distributed last week.

While Rogers hasn’t seen an increase in visitors wandering the halls without permission, the security measures will help prevent non-students from entering the school without being noticed, Principal Carole Meyer said.

“In a school of 1,600, it’s hard to memorize every face,” Meyer said. “Where schools used to be the safe haven of a neighborhood, people aren’t as reluctant to walk into schools as they used to be.”

Visitors are required to check in at the office at all school buildings, as warning signs posted at all entrances indicate. But not everyone follows the rules, Meyer said.

“This is just another way to keep our school safe,” Meyer said.

Rogers appears to be the only school in Spokane implementing the vests and the badges, a fact that has some students feeling singled out. The north Spokane school long has battled a rough image that school patrons and students say is unfair.

“I wonder why we are the only ones,” said sophomore An Nguyen. “We can’t be the only school that has visitors coming in that don’t go here.”

The district does not require students to wear identification badges; it’s up to the individual school’s administration, said Jason Conley, district director of security and transportation.

Administrators at Rogers got the idea for the new security measures this fall while visiting Pasco High School, where all of the nearly 3,000 students are required to wear identification. The school also uses the orange vests, a practice that has been in place for four or five years, said Dean of Students Jim Bonney.

“They are very noticeable. … We know that student has a legitimate reason to be out of class,” Bonney said.

Students are also less inclined to be out of class for frivolous reasons, or to congregate when they are supposed to be in class.

It’s a way of keeping tabs on students that doesn’t seem to be widely used.

“I have to say that I have never heard of the approach,” said Kenneth Trump, the president of an Ohio-based school safety and security consulting firm. “I have heard of students carrying hall passes and notebooks, which have a section containing hall pass permissions from teachers, but never orange vests.”

At Rogers, students previously would carry a small slip of yellow paper signed by a teacher when they needed to leave class. With the orange safety vests, teachers don’t have to ask to see that pass, which is easy to wad up and put in a pocket. In addition, the teacher’s name is written on each vest, letting officials know where the student should be – for example, a student wearing a vest from a third-floor classroom shouldn’t be on the first floor.

“With the vests it’s very obvious if they are milling around an area that’s not congruent to where they are supposed to be,” Meyer said.

Principal Jon Swett, of Lewis and Clark High School, said he considered asking students to wear vests but decided against it. However, as part of a revamp of the school’s crisis response plan, teachers will use the bright orange vests during school evacuations and emergencies.

“Once we are out of the building and you’ve got 2,000 kids standing outside, it’s not easy to tell the staff from the students,” Swett said.

Students at North Central High School were required to wear identification badges several years ago, though that is no longer the case.

“The question becomes, if a kid doesn’t have it what should you do?” said NC Principal Steven Gering. “How much time do you want to spend as a school managing that for 1,500 kids?”

Gering said that public schools across the country that have had security problems have considered using uniforms to identify students.

“I’ve heard that’s been more successful,” Gering said.