When Maumelle High School students returned from the spring vacations Monday morning, they found a much more restrictive campus.
It became one of the first schools in the area to implement new policies in response to the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
Most of the change came from more thorough enforcement of the old rules, principal Jeff Senn told us. Guards were more visible around campus, and manned every entrance; teachers locked their doors for each class, with a “tardy bell” sounding one minute before the start of each period to warn students; and everyone was required to wear their school-issued identification. The biggest change is that students can no longer leave school without a parent showing up to check them out.
“Originally, what we had thought in mind was not making school a place where they felt like they were really restricted,” Senn explained, “where we wanted to create a sense of responsibility that was placed on the students, for them to be able to come and go.”
Many students were given permission via their parents to leave campus for lunch. Previously, parents could call or email the school to allow their children to leave, but that is no longer allowed.
Senn started notifying families by phone call, email, and social media during the week off, and gave students another reminder as they entered the school Monday morning. “We’ve had a great response to the changes,” he said.
“It felt a lot safer today,” Dillon Telford, a senior at Maumelle High, said Monday afternoon. “I saw security the whole day, doing their job. They were all doing really good jobs today; coming into classrooms, making sure we all had our IDs, and I was really…it just felt a lot safer, for them doing that for us.”
“Huge difference,” said Caron Williams, a fellow senior. “Personally, with me and my friend circle, we felt a lot more safer, because—like Dillon said—everywhere we went, there was security at the door. There was no wondering, like, ‘Okay, if something does go down, where would everybody be at?’ We seen everybody. They were asking us where we’re going in the hallways. It just made me feel a lot safer being at school.”
Senn pointed to three important events as the catalysts for the policy update. First was the shooting in Florida, in which 17 students and staff members were killed. While that made lots of students more conscientious of their safety, an incident at Maumelle High School earlier this month brought the issue home.
A couple of students were arrested on March 9. They allegedly wore masks and threatened another student with a BB gun in the school’s parking lot during the middle of the day.
“It was pretty intense,” Senn recalled. “I had not seen police officers work in tandem the way they did, and it was very, very intense. And they did an excellent job handling the situation, but I wouldn’t want to go through that again.”
A few days later, when students at schools across the nation walked out to protest gun violence, a group of students hosted an assembly to discuss their concerns regarding the safety of the school.
“We heard their voice,” Senn stated. “And their voice was: we don’t feel safe because of the traffic in and out of our schools.”
The students pointed out that the suspects in the attack a few days prior snuck out of school without permission during lunchtime, and that’s how they are believed to have gotten the BB gun to threaten their classmate with.
Williams is glad so many of her follow students spoke up. “It makes us feel like what we say just doesn’t go above their head and they don’t listen to us,” she said. “It made me feel like, you know, I can come in here and talk to them, and they kinda understand where I’m coming from.”
Senn expected to receive some pushback from students upset about not being able to leave for lunch anymore, but he said that was not the case.
“There was quite a bit more people happy,” Telford said, “that we are making sure that kids are staying in school, and making sure that we’re not leaving school for lunch, and just keeping everyone on campus to stay safe.”
Williams joked that there were a lot more students in her classes Monday than usual, because they risked having to come in on Saturday if they were caught in the halls. She said the enhanced focus on security and order is a good step toward making Maumelle High School safer.
“And it reminds us of what we come here to do,” she added, “and that’s learn. We don’t come here to play, we don’t come here to go out and hang out with our friends, eat lunch. Come to school to learn.”
Senn said there would be some leniency for students who arrive a few minutes late at the start of the day, and he mentioned that many athletes get out of class a few minutes early in order to make it to practice or to leave for competition.
“Several busses and cars were stopped by the train, and so they couldn’t get here quite on time,” he mentioned. “But we understand things are going to happen.”
At the assembly on March 14, students asked to hear more information about the threats to their safety. Senn agreed, and briefed them in more detail about the lockdown the week before. He has also scheduled assemblies with each grade level next week to go over the incident, and respond to their security questions.
“I think it’s a good, another good opportunity for them to voice their opinions and know that they’re being heard,” he stated.