Adam Allan Bromenschenkel, St. Stephen
I am a current student at Sartell High School. I am in 10th grade and have attended the Sartell school district my entire life. I’ve always loved the Sartell school district and have always recommended it to anybody moving and looking for a school to pick.
In Sartell the teachers are awesome, and they are also very nice. In all my years of being in the Sartell school district I’ve never had a teacher (who) made me dread going to his/her class. Long story short, I love being in the Sartell school district and it has made me actually like school.
But lately, a problem has been popping up that’s making the teachers and students concerned. That involves the new high school the Sartell school district is building and I don’t think the school district is telling taxpayers and parents this big problem and there’s a reason. It’s because it’s a VERY big problem. The problem is the new high school being built right now, is set to have partial glass walls throughout basically every class room. This seems hard to believe for many reasons but, I assure you this is true.
I have been told this by many teachers and many students. In fact currently, in the current high school’s library, the school is building a life-size model of what a wall of a classroom would look like. In the library you can clearly see they are planning on having a glass, wall, glass, wall, pattern. It goes by having about one foot of brick wall, then one foot of glass walls (and so on and so fourth). This has students and teachers concerned, I have gotten information from an inside source (a teacher who wishes to have there name stay classified) (who) has told me the majority of the teachers at the current high school have told the school board this is a bad idea, and many students have said it as well, but still the school district won’t listen.
In fact (more than) 75 Sartell High School students staged a walk-out on March 14 for 17 minutes to show respect for the 17 deaths from Florida, stand up for gun control and also to show the school we want change but, again, nothing.
These glass walls are just plain stupid for many reasons. First the less serious ones, the fact students are still teenagers. Having glass being 50 percent of the walls in classrooms will distract students by seeing other students in the hallway. I’ve also been told the glass will be regular glass, not non-transparent glass. Also the fact we are still teenagers which means the glass WILL be broken within the first year. There are plenty of, um, “non-adult like students” in the high school, which means there will be “stuff” drawn on the glass and things thrown at the glass.
Secondly the more serious problem, school shooters/invaders. The way it is right now, I can come to school an hour late, push the button at the door, not look at the camera on the door (so they don’t know who I am) and I’m able to just walk right in. That is extremely concerning to know we don’t even have a first line of defense to try to make sure the intruder doesn’t get in. Then add on top of that, the new high school’s inside classroom walls will be 50-percent glass, which means you can see through it and look into the classroom, and then break the glass. This basically gives students nowhere to run or hide in case of a school shooter. I and basically all other students are very concerned about this and we have voiced our opinion but they don’t care. They figure the young teenage students don’t know what there talking about but, I think they forget WE are the ones who will have to go to that school five days of the week, eight hours a day. And our parents are the ones who are paying for the school. Our concerns should be taken seriously.
