Imagine this: you’re running late. You had a rough morning, and you’re just arriving at school. So, you rush to the doors by the theater and the student drop-off to make it to Ceramics. As you pull the door, it clangs loudly in the silent, chilly morning. It’s stuck and doesn’t open. What’s this? Is it locked? Now you have to go all the way to the main office. As you walk there, you think to yourself: Why do we have this thing anyway? To answer your questions, I met with Ms. Schwentor.
The reason for the fence is safety and to prevent members of the community and students from other schools from treating the Shorecrest campus as a walkway. It makes it very difficult to keep people out of these corridors, given our campus’s large size, which is why having a larger structure around them is beneficial in terms of safety. Later in the interview, I asked her if the fence and school shootings had any relation, and she said that it’s not in response to school shootings specifically, but does provide another layer of protection or another protective measure.
Before the interview with Ms. Schwentor, I had the idea that the fence had to do with students skipping, but Ms. Schwentor assured me that the two things were unrelated. Students can always exit the gates, but not always enter.
The construction of the fence started in mid to late August and was completed in early September. It was supposed to be completed last summer, but the project was delayed. Many students are concerned about how much the fence costs, considering there has been a lot of talk about budget cuts lately, following the loss of Ms. Coquille’s position (Substance Prevention and Intervention Counselor). Students and teachers comment that Shoreline has a budget crisis. And isn’t this whole fence thing expensive? This was one of my main discussion points with Ms. Schwentor, and she had some answers.
Ms. Schwentor explained that because the decision to build the fences was so long ago, the district was not concerned about the same budget issues. She also explained that there are two pools of money for budgeting, one for facilities and one for staffing. When we lost Ms. Coquille last year, that was out of the staffing budget, which saw more cuts than our facilities budget.
The pools of money cannot be mixed. When budgets are approved, they are authorized to be used for one of these purposes, not both. If you mixed the two pools, you would not be using money for its intended, approved purpose.
The fence has inspired quotes like “I feel bad for the freshmen, they’re just moving from one prison to the next” (referring to Kellogg) and “I just feel like it’s kind of unnecessary.” Many students and teachers are upset about the new development because it defeated the appeal of an open campus high school with a college feel. However, Ms. Schwentor highlights that “Student safety is my top priority,” and when she was visiting Shorecrest with her son, she had concerns about the open campus being a safety issue as a parent herself.
Her main idea is that Shorecrest should be a place where students can come and go, but instead, “If I have a space where other people who are not part of our school environment can get into that space, then student safety has been compromised.” Unfortunately, in our day and age, this is just the truth.
On a more positive note, when I asked Ms. Schwentor about the possibility of decorating the fences, she said, “I’m totally open to that, 100%.” She mentioned that she would like to build a policy around decorating with ASB.
All in all, the fence was built as a general safety precaution for students at Shorecrest, but the lack of information has led many students and teachers to be confused or scared. I hope this article cleared up some of your fence-related woes and worries.
On a lighter note, a fun fact about Ms. Schwentor is that her favorite ice cream flavor is “anything with chocolate!”
