At the start of the 2023-2024 school year, a new policy was put into effect at Middleton High School (MHS) requiring all students to show their physical student ID when entering the building.
The student ID policy is aimed at ensuring that only MHS students are entering the school.
“The main reason [it was implemented] was to make sure that our students are the ones entering our buildings,” said Erik Johnson, MHS Dean of Students. “We didn’t want to have students from…other schools coming in.”
Last school year, non-MHS students reportedly were entering the building. The new ID policy was a decision debated and discussed with multiple staff members at MHS and eventually instituted to prioritize the safety of the students.
“[Safety] and attendance expectations were our two goals for this year,” said Amy Schernecker, another MHS Dean of Students.
In previous years, students were required to show a physical ID for games and homecoming, or the screen on Infinite Campus when entering the building during school hours. By enforcing a rule that everyone needed to show their physical ID, unsafe instances have been mitigated.
“I think we’ve seen an uptick in safety in our building,” Schernecker said.
Some faculty believe that it has strengthened the school community.
“[It’s] great to see students when entering the building,” Johnson said. He expressed his delight in greeting students with physical interaction in the morning. “[We can see] what their name is, and we can say, ‘Welcome to school!’…It makes a big difference.”
However, many students had mixed views on the policy. The majority disliked the policy but understood the reason that it had been put into place.
“I know this new policy is supposed to protect us somehow, but I feel like…[it] adds extra pressure to us to remember our IDs,” one sophomore said.
“I think that more people should know the reasoning because it’s important,” said a senior. “However, as a student, it doesn’t make me feel any safer about potential threats, knowing that in most active [threats], it’s a student who turns violent.”
Many students were aware of the reason that the policy was enacted and felt that a step towards student safety was appropriate, but think it has yet to be effective in all of the areas that it aimed to be.
“I don’t think it’s a huge problem to bring in a little card every day, but with everything in our lives becoming so digitized, I feel like a more effective strategy could be implemented since we already have Infinite Campus,” said another sophomore.
“I definitely liked it better when they let us just use our Infinite Campus photo…[Now] it would be so easy to borrow an ID from a Middleton student and enter,” explained a student.
This student ID policy does not cover the whole MHS campus, only implemented at the North and South entrances. Some students pointed out this deficiency, criticizing the policy as students can enter the building without needing their IDs at specific doorways.
“If anything, there should be someone checking IDs at the athletic entrance as well,” an anonymous senior said.
Currently, it looks like the policy will stay in place at MHS for the foreseeable future.
“These are those policies that seem frustrating when they first come out,” Johnson said. “But in reality, if you go to college… [it’s the] exact same thing…get in any academic building, you swipe in with your ID.”
“We’re trying to always tweak the policies so that they’re…not only user friendly but also beneficial to students. ‘We’re exploring options,’” added Schernecker. “Mr. Johnson…has asked students who are willing to work on extra projects for their input as to how to create programming [and] ideas as to how we could improve the procedure.”
