Field House closed to students due to multiple incidents

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Credit: Aimee Smith

The Wayland High School administration restricted the hours where students are allowed to enter the field house which limits access to the basketball courts and locker rooms inside. “We want to make sure that those positive things, [like school dances, Spirit Days or access to the field house], are happening,” Vice Principal Sean Gass said. “When there is misbehavior or bad behavior, we want to make sure that we are addressing it as quickly as possible and as fairly and as equitably as possible, and making sure that those kinds of things don’t continue.”

Aimee Smith

Earlier this year, staff noticed poor behavior in students, so they made the decision to lock the doors to the field house to non-wellness students throughout the day. The inability to access the field house has caused frustration among many students, but staff members have seen positive effects, and they hope to continue the conversation about why it closed to promote positive behavior within the Wayland school community.

Originally, the field house closed its doors after students were caught vaping and vandalizing in the building. Students were leaving litter on the ground and destroying the game clock, so the school administration felt as though it was beneficial to limit unsupervised access to the field house.

“We want to make sure that those positive things, [like school dances, Spirit Days or access to the field house], are happening,” Vice Principal Sean Gass said. “When there is misbehavior or bad behavior, we want to make sure that we are addressing it as quickly as possible and as fairly and as equitably as possible, and we are making sure that those kinds of things don’t continue.”

Although the locked field house creates some drawbacks by limiting student access to the facilities, the wellness staff noticed some benefits that are helping to create a good learning environment.

“It’s nice to know that when we’re in here the doors are locked, so I don’t have to worry about people going into the locker room, potentially committing theft,” wellness teacher John Berry said. “Students can leave their backpacks in the field house, and they’ll be safe.”

While the inability to access the field house may have harmed some students, some think the inappropriate actions within the facility created an unsafe environment for students within the whole school.

“Everyone finds their space in the high school that’s their place where they go for reprieve from the school day,” Vice Principal Laura Cole said. “The field house might have been that for some kids. That moment where they think ‘I can sit here, and in this place I feel safe,’ so I feel like there could be some negative impacts. However, I will say that some of the negative behaviors in there were extremely above the line that would have made it a safe space.”

The administration does not plan to keep the field house closed indefinitely and hopes to open up the doors once they believe students will be able to respect the facility.

“We don’t have a specificity in terms of timeline,” Gass said. “We do have specific plans to reopen it, particularly during the lunch and free periods and before school, but not while wellness classes are in there. Ultimately, we’d like to reopen it when there’s no class there, before school and during lunch.”

To reopen the field house, the school community needs to continue talking to one another to try to improve school-wide behavior to ensure that students’ safe places remain safe.

“We’re looking for peers to promote more of a positive school environment for everyone, so just be nicer to one another,” Cole said. “Redoing the little things, like kindness and being considerate.”

Students and staff have already begun these conversations about increasing positive behavior within the school, and the administration hopes to keep our community moving forward in the right direction by continuing them. The school administration encourages students to voice their opinions to create a safe learning environment for everyone at the high school.

“The conversations we’ve had with the kids, who I know have used that space as a really important space for them to blow off some steam before school, have been really good,” Gass said. “We want students to be talking about this, and then be talking about how we can re-enter the space and re-normalize it, so it can serve the purpose it was supposed to serve.”