As concerns about school safety and shootings rise, districts are tightening security even though it limits public access to campus grounds.
Joaquin and Jude Perez, like many children in their Long Beach neighborhood, learned how to ride their bikes on the blacktop at Fremont Elementary School. The school grounds have long been their de-facto park, where they play with friends after school and on weekends while parents chat.
“Some of our campuses have been fully enclosed for decades,” district spokesman Chris Eftychiou said in an email. “But two months after [the] Parkland [shooting in 2018], our school board voted to provide additional fencing so that we could fully enclose the remainder of our campuses.”Many in the community, however, see the closed campus as a loss worthy of protest. Fremont offers the only large play area within walking distance of their homes.
Opening up schools to the neighborhood helps families feel comfortable and moves them to become involved, said Jeff Vincent, the director of the Center for Cities and Schools at UC Berkeley, a policy research center focused on developing family-friendly cities centered around high quality school access. But the “hardening of schools” that’s happening as a result of school safety initiatives post-Parkland might deter such involvement, he said.
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