SOUTH RIVER, N.J. (1010 WINS) — The South River public school district will start mandating see-through backpacks for all students starting this fall as schools across the nation grapple with mass shootings.
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From Pre-K to 12th grade, each student will receive a free see-through bag and all standard backpacks will be banned for the 2022-2023 school year, according to a letter from Superintendent Sylvia Zircher.
“This is something that many districts have adopted over the last several years and something that the high school instituted during the 2019-2020 school year and has continued to require,” wrote Zircher. “The use of clear backpacks is just an ‘extra’ measure in keeping prohibited items from entering our schools.”
Extra clear bags will be available for $7 each, and students will be allowed to buy clear bags from outside the school if they want to.
Small handbags will still be allowed, but can not exceed the size of a half sheet of paper.
The switch to see-through backpacks has been adopted by other school districts across the country, but criminal justice experts say there’s limited security benefit and the backpacks encroach on student’s privacy.
"Optically, it's good," Thaddeus Johnson, a Council for Criminal Justice senior fellow at Georgia State University, told Patch. "It's kind of like surveillance cameras. It makes you feel safe, but you're not safer."
The change comes in the wake of a massacre in Uvalde, Texas in which a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers at an elementary school.
The massacre has school districts and parents across the country nervous at the potential for violence and searching for answers as to how to protect children from mass shootings.
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