Roseville High School has made many different changes to the school this year, including alterations to the school’s operation. One of these new decisions is that the campus now does not open to students until 8:00 AM, or 30 minutes before school starts.

“Every year we continually look at how we can provide our students and staff a safe environment to learn in,” Assistant Principal Jason Wilson said. “…just a few of the issues that we were encountering last year is with a late start [is] the campus being open in a lot of entrances,”

Wilson explains how it is difficult to monitor a completely open campus in the morning while the staff is preparing for the school day and the issues that could arise in that situation. 

“…in the morning these gates are open while our staff were collaborating, working together, you know, working in their classrooms without a lot of supervision on campus, which [an] unsupervised campus can present some challenges and problems,” Wilson said. “…for example, inappropriate behavior from some that might show up early in the bathrooms such as, unfortunately, vaping, vandalism, destruction of property, things like that,”

Along with this new policy, the school has also decided to leave some gates closed during certain times. The most notable one being the walk-through berry lot gate near Independence High School. Some students prefer when this gate is left open for easier access to the campus when parking in the berry lot behind the school.

“The Berry Street gate is usually always closed so I have to walk all the way around to one of the front gates and it’s a pretty far walk. It’s like five extra minutes of just walking, especially when it’s hot out, it’s terrible.” junior Carlos Gutierrez said.

“I used to park in the berry lot and I would be able to walk straight over…but, since the gate has been closed, I’ve had to park in the senior lot because that is the only way I can get into the campus quick enough, and it’s pretty frustrating.” junior MacKenzie Trejo said. 

Even though this new change has caused some inconvenience with accessing the campus for some students, Wilson believes it provides more safety while the area is congested before and after school.

“The biggest concern there is that Independence High School and Pathways, or Pathways High School, experienced a lot of traffic from people dropping off, picking up, pulling in, and pulling out of that parking lot which creates safety for kids walking around…” Wilson said. “It was an area that is also very difficult to supervise on a consistent basis. If we are able to, we would consider opening it up, but we’d probably want to keep that one secure as much as we possibly can.”