A new policy announced last week from Laurens School District 55 will require students to wear transparent backpacks starting this coming school year.
Laurens School District 55 Assistant Superintendent for Pupil Services, Jody Penland, said that this is meant as an extra layer of protection following recent events.
“We’ve a couple incidences over the past couple of years – past year where we have had a couple of guns on site, and we just felt like this was a need for our district to be able to implement the clear bag policies for us to have just an added layer of protection for our students,” Penland said.
He continued that this is part of multiple layers of protection the school district is implementing that will eventually expand to metal detectors.
“We already keep locked doors; we’re already getting ready to implement metal detectors in our middle and high schools. And we’re just looking at the extra added layer of protection to also include the clear bags.”
Several parents of students in the school district responded on social media following the announcement, some agreeing with the decision for the purpose of safety, and others expressing concerns.
The most common of those concerns regarded the potential fragility of transparent backpacks under the weight students regularly carry and concerns of privacy, as all the students’ possessions within the bags would be visible. The announced bag searches also came up among the privacy concerns of parents.
Penland responded to these concerns in an interview, stating that the durability of transparent backpacks has significantly improved in recent years. He added that the school district is also offering free transparent bags to many through a backpack drive.
In response to the invasion of privacy concerns, Penland reiterated the solution proposed in the originally announced policy.
“Whenever we’re looking at the clear backpacks, there are certain items that some people don’t want seen. There is what some people are calling kind of an invasion of privacy,” Penland said. “But we’re really also providing the kind of a zipper pouch, like a pencil pouch, especially for our females who need some products in there. So we are providing that type of allowability for our students to carry inside their backpacks.”
He also referred to the allowance for non-transparent lunchboxes and bags for equipment for extra-curricular activities such as band instruments and sports equipment.
You can listen to Laurens School District 55 Assistant Superintendent for Pupil Services Jody Penland’s full comments below:
For a story with more on the full details of the new policy, click here.
