If you live in Salem and walk to school, park your car on Park Avenue, or get dropped off by the back entrances, you have probably experienced a number of uncomfortably cold walks to Schreiber’s main entrance this winter. You bundle up in a heavy sweater, coat, hat and gloves, but even these precautions can’t keep your body heat from sticking to you the entire walk. Your face begins to hurt against the dry and bitter wind, your lips begin to chap, and your eyes begin to water, all while the locked side entrances tease you.
The back entrance doors are locked from the inside for valid reasons. Due to growing support for tighter school security due to events elsewhere in the U.S., Schreiber has decided not to allow students to enter the school through these side doors anymore. It is a safe move no doubt, but the precaution has made mornings for a number of students more difficult than they have to be.
The Schreiber Times believes that students should be allowed to enter school in the mornings from the back doors, while also keeping safety in mind. Instead of locking the doors and forcing students to walk the perimeter of the building, students should be allowed entrance to the school at certain specified times, while responsible adults sit behind the doors. This is exactly what the school does at the main entrance of the school. Whatever safety precautions are set up there should be mimicked at the back entrances.
Not only will this allow students to get inside the building faster to get warm and go to class, but it will actually secure our school even more by having multiple secure entrances. It’s doubtful that an intruder would follow the “no side entrance” rule.