Silence of The School Board
Silence of The School Board
Ash Freyer
It is a well-known problem that schools often do not communicate with their students or even their teachers. Students are left confused and scared all the time because the school district refuses to tell them things. For example, when schools go into lockdowns, the students have no idea what’s going on or what kind of danger it is. It leads students to panic because they have no idea if the threat is more or less severe than they assume it is. Sometimes lockdowns are for very minor reasons, but since the students have no idea how serious a lockdown is, it can cause a fight or flight response because they have no idea how much danger they are in.
Schools should tell students what is going on because they have a right to know what kind of danger they are in and why their 
learning is being disrupted. It also can lead to some students not caring about lockdowns at all. They have no idea if they’re actually in danger, so they may treat it like a joke. Which can also lead to the students, who think it is more serious, to panic more. A Flagstaff High School student, Natalie Parra said, “I think that students should know what’s going on, because they are in that environment and without knowing what’s going on the situation could get worse.” This opinion shows that there are many students who agree that the school should tell the students what’s going on.
A lot of students feel that the school doesn’t tell them the things that they need to know. A high school senior said, “I think they need to tell us because we gotta know what the heck is going on, for our safety.” This quote reveals that even the seniors think that the school should tell us what is happening, and that the students that have been going to Flagstaff High for a long time are frustrated with the school's lack of transparency. The school also does not tell the teachers what is happening which can lead to them being unsure on how to protect the students or knowing what the situation is and how best to handle the students.
The school also doesn't even tell the students the schedules for test and assembly days till the day of, which can lead them to be late or even head to the wrong classes. They also don’t tell students when they are going to have fire drills and lockdown drills, which very often causes students to panic because they don’t know if it’s real or not. It also causes students to act like it’s a joke because they’ve had so many drills over the course of their time in high school.
Overall, schools need to tell students about what’s going on for the safety of the students and to keep students from messing around or panicking when they don’t need to. As well as telling the students the danger and the situation, schools should also tell students about the time schedules of days like tests or assemblies so they don’t get confused, end up being late, or end up in the wrong place because they don’t know what the schedule is. The school should tell students about different dangers and give them the schedules so that they are well informed about what is going on.