The medical community, as well as the parents are saying schools need to get the weight off our students backs. We must do that.
It is a well documented fact that young people today are carrying far too much weight in their backpacks and often are carrying it in such a way that it might cause long term back problems. The School Board must address the issue. It would be simple if funding was in place to purchase and install the lockers and we were sure of adequate future funding to accomodate the high maintenance costs associated with lockers. Unfortunately the money is not there unless we are willing to take it from other priorities in our budget. Our students and the parents of Monrovia deserve an all out effort by the School Board to insure students, parents, staff, site governance councils, and the community are brought together to find new and inovative ways to install and maintain lockers or to solve this problem in other ways. Over the past six years (at least), this issue has been discussed over and over in the committees and in United Parents for Students at Monrovia High. We have tried classroom sets of text books. That has not worked. It is time to move on to find real solutions to this problem.
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