Signs stating, “Students, this door is locked. You must go around…” have been placed at breezeway entrances and exits. Clarke Central High School Principal Marie Yuran is in motion to put these doors on timers. “Some of the new doors, like the breezeway door and the front office main door, those are on automatic timers so we could unlock them for transitions and lock them down during class times,” Yuran said. Photo by Aneesa Conine-Nakano.
By ANEESA CONINE-NAKANO – Editor-in-Chief
As Clarke Central High School’s renovations come to a close after two years, Principal Marie Yuran discusses the measures the administration team is taking to keep the school secure.
In light of the final stages of renovations at Clarke Central High School, Principal Marie Yuran believes securing the school’s entrances and exits is a priority.
“We want (students) to get around quickly enough to get where you need to go and not have to walk out of the way, but we want to also secure our building the best that we can and secure our whole property,” Yuran said. “We do not want to lock people out because we want to be a community school, but at the same time, we want to be vigilant about safety.”
Senior Sandra Evans says she has experienced some of the inconveniences caused by the locked doors.
“If anything, it just annoys me because there are only like one or two doors that you can use to get into the building and it makes for a lot of wasted time and useless walking. I mean, just on Monday, I was about five minutes late to my first period because none of the entrances to the school around the band room are ever open. I had to travel across the whole school just to get back to where I started,” Evans said.
Yuran says a potential solution and compromise to students’ concerns are automatic timers on some of the entrances and exits, which the administration is discussing now.
“Some of the new doors like the breezeway door and the front office main door, those are on automatic timers we can actually, it’s pretty cool, we can determine when those would lock and unlock. So we could unlock them for transitions and lock them down during class times,” Yuran said.
According to Yuran, overall, safety is a top priority and measures are being discussed to ensure that the campus is being well managed and secure.
“We live in a day and age where there have been terrible incidents that have happened, not only in school, but just in large public areas, so you want to make every effort to be as safe as you possibly can,” Yuran said. “The bottom line is if somebody wants to get into our building and do something terrible, it’s likely they are going to find a way to do that unfortunately, but we want to try to prevent as much as we possibly can.”
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