We Don’t Have Enough Security
As I visit schools this year on my search to understand education, certain images haunt me. One is of the metal fence surrounding a large LAUSD high school in South Central that I faced one morning as I was trying to leave. Though my car was in the parking lot only a few feet away, the gate, marked “Emergency Exit,” was held shut with a massive iron padlocked chain. Beyond the fence, I could see kids running around the football field for P.E. (where, incidentally, classes were so overcrowded that teachers often faced classes as large as 70).
I rattled the gate, thinking that since this was an emergency exit, the padlock might not actually be latched, but in fact, I was locked in. Because classes were in session, almost no one was around to help me; finally, at the back of the cement courtyard, I found a security guard, a diminutive middle-aged woman with a giant, friendly smile. Cheerfully, she walked me back to the gate, explaining that she had to keep it locked while classes were in session.
Why? I asked. Wasn’t this the emergency exit?
She shrugged. “Ditchers.”
“You mean kids
