LAUSD New Security Measures?

By: Silvia Padilla & Carlos Ruvalcaba

LAUSD is reviewing safety and security measures into its schools. Animo Pat Brown being part of LAUSD, may decide to also take part of this new implementation.

But what is this new security that might be implemented? That would be “Wanding”. This is essentially when a security guard scans your body with a metal detector in order to determine whether or not you have any hidden metal objects (possibly weapons) hidden on your person. This is due to the fact that many school shooting have occurred in the past and in order to prevent this, the school district would like to take precautions.

The shooting that caught our district’s attention was the shooting at Gardena High School, and “Because of the shooting at Gardena High School, we, across the board at L.A. Unified, really started being a little more conscientious about wanding. Every high school has because of that,” says an LAUSD Admin.

Students will have to get wanded before entering the school premises to ensure safety of all student and staff. Personally, this seems like a perfectly great security measure to add because, if you don’t have any weapons, then you don’t have anything to worry about. It is unclear whether the wanding will be implemented and if they will find a way to scan everyone or just a few students who fit a criteria or profile.

Security like this may bring complications. If students get selected, they may feel like the school is against them, and scanning individual students may take too much time. Students might find themselves getting stuck at the doors and not being able to enter the building or get to class on time due to the fact that it takes time to wand someone, and school administrators wouldn’t want to take learning time away due this slow security which can be avoided.

“I don’t think the technology exist, but if there was a machine that can scan all our students equally as they walk through the doors and take an X-Ray only alerting us for potential weapons, then I would be for it. Kinda like the airport, everyone has to do it and walk through it.” says Mr. Hartford. “But at the current state, I am oppose any wanding because it will most likely slow down students from entering the building and remove instructional time, not to mention that wanding itself isn’t fair to all students as some get checked and others don’t”.

Taking this topic to the hallways, a student thinks similarly as she thinks security measures
in form of metal detection just isn’t worth it. “I don’t think APB needs any scanners” says Wendy Medina, Sophomore. “Most of the students here actually want to learn and build a future for themselves. I don’t think anyone would ruin that opportunity by bringing a weapon to school.” So Wendy has faith in her peers to not do something as foolish as bringing weapons. In the very end, the school does not seem interested in bringing in these security measures. So it is safe to say that we are dependent on each other to make our school experience amazing and not a nightmare.