This year, school lockers have gone from being automatically assigned to students to being request-only. In a first for Perkiomen Valley, the administration decided to open a form for requesting a personal locker, rather than provide a fixed locker for each student.
“Why are we going through all this work to assign them, in places where they don’t want to use them?,” said Dr. Moss, Lead Principal of the high school, “So, how about we let the kids pick their own locker, where it’s convenient for them, and maybe they’ll want to use them.”
This decision reflects a growing trend among schools, as students begin to forgo their lockers in an increasingly digital world. Some praise the decision, bringing up the possibility of renovating these spaces. However, many others also bring up the fact that schools may not entirely incentivize students to use them.
As Lucas Borchardt, a junior, put it, “I feel like if I had more time between classes to or more of a reason to use them, I would use them,” With around four minutes between classes, moving back and forth between a fixed locker and the next class can be seen as inconvenient.
But some have suggested more drastic changes.
“If we tore down the lockers, it would make the hallways less congested. It would make room for other more useful things,” Sam Decker, a current senior, said.
While the school currently has no plans to completely remove the lockers, some have already been removed over the summer, like the ones by the auditorium.
“There are some lockers that can be removed, and some that are built-in in the walls, that won’t be as easy,” Dr. Moss said. “If we see the trend where kids aren’t going to use them or don’t want to use them or in areas where no one is using them… those can probably be removed.”
Currently, eleven people have requested their own lockers.
