One of the features present in middle and high school are lockers. Lockers are used to store students’ belongings, so that they do not have to haul their belongings throughout the school day. However, these lockers have several problems that could potentially make them obsolete in the future.

For example, many students have reported that their lockers have been stolen from or vandalized, or that their lockers have become unresponsive and won’t open or don’t function properly. Which begs the question: will lockers be necessary for middle schoolers in the future? “As for lockers, there are problems that exist due to lockers. I can’t say with 100% certainty that the problems would go away by removing the lockers, or whether that would create different problems,” principal Nicole Hagerty says on the matter. “There are several factors that we must consider when discussing the removal of the lockers. Would we allow students to carry backpacks to classes? If so, what size backpacks? Are our hallways and classrooms large enough to accommodate students carrying backpacks, and gym bags, and lunch bags, and hoodies, etc.? What is the cost to the campus/district to remove the lockers? In addition to these more logistic-type questions, we would also need to get the input of students, teachers, and parents. Are the majority in favor of removing the lockers? As for how long the lockers will last, we already have some lockers that are broken. Some of the broken lockers can be repaired, and some are beyond repair. I do know that we have a finite number of lockers. At this point, we have enough lockers for all of our students, which our current enrollment is 1398. However, if our student enrollment continues to grow, we will at some point run out of lockers to issue to students. At that point, I would not purchase additional lockers. Instead, we would look at a different system, which might involve issuing lockers to a particular grade level, or issuing a locker to those who want one, or removing the lockers completely.”

Canyon Echoes handed out surveys to some students about their opinion on the matter. “I think the lockers should be wider, for more storage,” 6th grader Andrea Rodriguez says. “And they should be more separated from each other, or they should all be top lockers.” However, some students have different thoughts about the lockers and feel they should be removed completely. “They’re hard to shut, and often get stuck in a bad spot,” 7th grader Raymond Sun says. “They are useless things that take up space!”

While the topic is highly debated on, the answer is still unclear to the question: will the lockers be removed? We can’t be certain just yet.