Schools around the world have different safety precautions. Some schools have more safety regulations than others. We interviewed many people around our school to get their opinion on our school safety.
First, we met with Mr. Sexton and Miss Fernandez, two math teachers here at Buena Park High School. We asked if they thought the school was safe and they both agreed, yet Miss Fernandez claimed she wanted a gate around the school. When asked about changing anything about the school, they both agreed again with a closed campus. They both agree with the school’s current way of handling threats. They also agreed that the school had enough necessities to handle a threat. The local PD is fast to respond and there are SROs on campus.
Mr. Niemeyer was the second person we interviewed, he is a history teacher here and Buena Park. He believes the school is safe, but will be even safer once there is a fence surrounding the school. He claims we didn’t need fences 10 years ago, but now we do because “The times have changed.” He also never believed one of his lessons would be what to do with an active shooter being on campus. When asked if our school has enough necessities to protect us from a threat, he stated “No, no one does, because it’s hard to stop with the automatic rifles we have right now in society, even the Buena Park Police Department are outgunned.” With that, he believes we should prohibit automatic rifles and assault rifles.
The third person interviewed was a student, Philip Floro who is a junior here at Buena Park. When asked if the school was safe, he replied “Yeah, relatively.” He couldn’t think of anything the school could change, and he liked the freedom of not feeling trapped in the school with gates. He believes the school does have enough necessities to protect us from a threat.
The fourth person, and final student we interviewed was Brian Lee, another junior. When asked about the school’s safety and security, he replied “I can’t really think of anything in particular to fix, but sometimes I feel uneasy about there being no gates but I usually just stop thinking about it. If we had an option to escape, it would draw more attention to the students, so the current code is right but there should be some routes of escape. I think the school could do better by fixing some stuff but I think it’s alright.”
The very last person interviewed was the Principal, Dr. Berg. He thinks the school is safe, and thinks strategic fencing would help the school. He claims “We have more campus supervisors this year than we’ve ever had” which adds a good layer of safety to the school. When asked about whether our school has enough necessities or not to protect us from a threat, he states “I don’t know if anybody is ever 100% prepared for a school shooting event, because they’re all unique, you don’t know when one is going to occur. All you can do is plan for a best-case scenario and then react in case something happens. So I think yes, we are as prepared as you can possibly be.”
After meeting with everyone, the most popular opinion was about the school being gated in, and how that would feel much safer than an open campus. Overall, it is seen that our school could fix some things, but it is a great school to be at.
