An article in the September 2022 Union mentioned that MUSD is planning to put fencing around the MHS campus to increase safety. Judging by the mention of reducing access points, I think this proposal is mainly concerned with possibly-dangerous people entering the school during school time as opposed to just regulating cars further.
Much of the front-of-school area is completely connected to the Escuela Parkway sidewalk, so I’m curious how fencing to restrict access points would be done in that area, especially with a lot of people traveling to and from the SJECCD extension and leaving/entering “campus” at different times depending on their previous or next class. I’m also curious about how fencing would work with regards to the visitor parking lot.
The article says that the school plans to reduce access points to the school (presumably so that it can patrol all of them) while keeping the school’s open feel. I wonder how this would materialize itself and how it would deal with actual visitors (who are headed to the office to get a permit) or, if fences are not completely temporary, with after school CLOG activities and people who come in to dog-walk on weekends.
I wonder how effective fencing is in keeping out people with possibly-bad intentions. I wonder how much more effective it would be than just having more signage about not entering MHS given that fences could be jumped by anyone who wants to go in enough (unless they’re the scary immovable ones by the PE complex), which would probably include most people who would “pose a threat to the school.”
I understand that this is planned by experts who probably know more about MHS and fencing than most of us combined, probably already addressed these concerns and would streamline the fencing as much as possible, but I hope that there’s at least a public comment session, or something similar, so our school’s practices don’t get unknowingly crushed.
Shrey Chaudhary
Class of 2023