Safety Saga

This article was co-written by Cece Guenther, Carter Harmon, and Lana Antonelis.

TYPE. Freshman Carter Harmon and Lana Antonelis sit in class typing away on their school issued chromebooks. Recently, the school has been much more serious about the protocols surrounding chromebooks. Photo courtesy of Cecelia Guenther.

This year, our school and many others are upping the safety protocols, which include locking the doors and enforcing signing in. During the pandemic, school safety focused on getting air filters and wearing face masks. Nowadays, non viral threats, like rising gun violence, have become more and more common, so what is our school doing to make it safe?

Throughout the years, safety has been prioritized at VHS in different ways; for example, during the COVID-19 pandemic, hygienic safety became a top priority. Wearing masks was mandatory to ensure that COVID would not spread throughout the school.

“The concern was really focused on how good our air filters are and how compliant or not we are with masking,” Principal John Erickson stated.

Safety looked different back then, but certain protocols were absolutely necessary due to all of the anxiety and mystery around COVID and its effects.

Today, safety looks like ensuring that no one who poses a threat to our students will be able to get into the building. This type of school safety has been prioritized lately due to threats of ICE raids and gun violence in schools around the country.

“There have been 53 school shootings in the United States so far this year, as of September 23, 2025. Twenty-seven were on college campuses, and 26 were on K-12 school grounds. The incidents left 19 people dead and at least 84 other victims injured” According to CNN and Gun Violence Archive.

“I feel like school shootings are becoming a bigger problem so as that continues, I would assume more precautions will be put in place,” Freshman Utah Lowry stated. Principal Erickson and Vice Principal Kovach shared their thoughts about the new safety protocols put in place in order to protect against these kinds of threats

“I think that both of us [Mr. Erickson and Mrs. Kovacs] have an appropriate amount of fear; we have almost five hundred kids that we take care of every day,” explained Ms. Sabrina Kovacs, Vice Principal.

Noting how their healthy fear doesn't control them, but rather encourages them to be as prepared as possible, Kovacs and Erickson expanded on what they are doing to feel prepared to protect their students.

“The biggest protocol that we are implementing is that we want to direct the vast majority of people to just use the front door and to be buzzed in, and that puts us in line not just with Chautauqua and McMurray, but with every school in king county that I am aware of,” Erickson said.

Despite the importance of the new protocols, there is a fair amount of frustration towards some of them. If you've walked in late to school this year, you know about a few of the new protocols that have been put in place. As soon as the late bell rings, the doors lock, and you must ring the doorbell to be let in by a staff member. Then begins a long wait in the check in line, followed by a decision that will affect the rest of your day– will you be marked tardy, or absent.

Being marked absent can lead to many consequences that expand past one’s school day. For example, if a student plays a sport, being marked absent on game day could result in being prohibited from playing in the game. Additionally, if a student is absent more than twice within one month, the student’s parents will be called.

Many people agree the locked door policy is annoying.

“Trying to get into the school from different entrances, besides the very front one where you have to use the doorbell, is very irritating…but, it is not that big of a deal,” senior Colt Holloway stated.

Nevertheless, students understand the importance behind the protocols.

“It is very important that we incentivize safety and make sure that we're doing those things necessary to keep our school safe and our students safe.” Holloway continued.

If a student has to buzz in due to tardyness, they should know that the locked doors are necessary for many reasons, but one is if our doors are locked, ICE can’t come into the school without presenting a valid warrant. Deportation has been a big focus this year since president Trump was elected, and he put out an administrative order for border control.

Another additional safety protocol this year is the school-issued chromebook only policy. Chromebooks have been a controversial issue this year. Students feel like they should be able to use the laptop of their choice to do work at school especially because chromebooks can be very slow and annoying to get work done on. The reason this rule has been put in place is because there are multiple websites and apps that could be unsafe on a computer.

“Chromebooks are set up in a way that your digital environment that you are operating in is curated and safe,” Kovach stated.

Though every year students have been encouraged to use their school issued chromebook rather than ones they bring from home, the past few years there has been more of an enforcement. The chromebook policy is not only part of safety, but is also partially a problem of equity.

“We can’t have [a student] whose parents can afford this really nice MacBook, use this super expensive MacBook while everybody else gets the $200 chromebook… that wouldn’t be equitable, and it also wouldn’t be following our digital safety protocols,” Kovach explained.

Having an unsafe environment in school can be problematic and dangerous. Giving students access to sites that are not safe can be troubling for a lot of reasons. If students are on sites that they should not be on during school hours then that creates an unsafe environment. So having a school issued chromebook that blocks certain sites makes the world wide web safe for students.

School safety is a priority for our school, and other schools. Our facility and office workers have worked and are working to make this school safe everyday. Students may not agree with all the new safety protocols, but it's incredibly necessary and it keeps us safe.

RING. Students are required to push the doorbell in order to get into the school if they are late. These new safety protocols are being put in place for a reason. Photo courtesy of Cecelia Guenther.