Do you feel safe when going to school? I know that I don’t.
Compared to when I first started high school, being at school has become more and more stressful due to the never-ending worry of what might happen during the day. Another school fight? Another threat to the school? Another lock down or shelter in place? The uncertainty is just too much.
My first year in high school was during Covid, so school was virtual for the whole year; but when my sophomore year began, we came back to in person school. At that time, the school felt safe and there were not many school fights or incidents that made school feel unsafe. The only thing I had to complain about was how they wouldn’t let sophomores off campus to get food, because I was a sophomore and I also wanted to go out and get food. Now, I am a senior and over the last two years I’ve noticed a serious rise in the number of fights that happen and how there are even days where several fights break out. Added to this are threats or incidents that happen and force us to be placed under lockdown or shelter in place. Additionally, poor behavior often leads to announcements made throughout the day to limit passes for students.
Every year it feels as though the school has become more and more chaotic, especially with the increasing number of fights. I believe it relates to the loitering of students in the halls who run around, yell, and cause disturbances within the school. While disengaged students are distracting others, the fights within the school create a chaotic and stressful environment for both the school staff and students who are swept up in the melees, especially when there is a crowd. Even after the fights are stopped, students still talk of it during class, especially when there are video recordings of the fight, and it is shared with others. Whether one was involved in the issue or not, the adrenaline rush and negative energy these events create causes students to be distracted and not pay attention to class.
School fights need to be addressed in a much more serious manner before they become such a common occurrence that they are essentially normalized into our school system. Without a stronger focus on this, students might become completely desensitized to this kind of in-school violence, seeing it as nothing more than just a part of school–something one must simply learn to live with like learning to drive a car. The more experience one has, the more it becomes normalized. Because students see altercations sometimes multiple times a day in person, on social media, or on the news, their emotional reactions are dampened, resulting in less emotional distress.
Last year at Paint Branch there was an attempt to combat some of these problems, as well as strategies put into place to handle them. On March 10, there was a student’s-only town hall meeting for each grade level that discussed student safety, providing every student the opportunity to voice their opinions. In these town halls, a panel of student speakers discussed safety concerns as well as measures the school needed to employ to create a safer school environment. Some of the ideas discussed included vaping, lack of excitement in the student body, and lack of communication between students, staff and administration.
School safety has been a concern that has existed well before this year but has significantly been increasing. And even with the attempt to solve these repetitive issues with the town hall last year, there have been no improvements. The school needs to start fixing and improving any and all problems.
