In response to the last quote made by student Caleb Lovell; There is a reason that adults make the rules and not children..Until this ban was made public, many of us adults didn't realize that backpacks were allowed to be carried through the highschools..Children live in a world where they are not yet mature enough to see the whole picture..Adults see the big picture everyday..I am a little concerned that North and South have not followed suit..And before our youngest enters highschool at North, there will be not only be myself, but numerous other parents, that will try and make North follow suit to West..I applaud Principal Towers for realizing the potential problem and fixing it..

I went to South over 10 years ago and taking a backpack to class made it much easier to ensure I was able to make my classes on time. I refuse to believe that because a student can NOT bring a backpack into a class will somehow lead to less drugs in school. I'm sorry but Caleb is right, those who want to will regardless. It may have been an easy first week but as the assignments pile on and kids are continually late to class this will not go over well

I would love to see " adults" take on a 21\2 min time in between classes to run to a locker ( no running in the halls!) And get your next class's books and note books and the go back to the other side of the building at West High school. It's not as easy as some would think. I get that they are just children and therefore not smart enough to voice an opinion or have it even remotely concidered by the adults who should be helping them grow by taking their thoughts seriously but its the students who will suffer in the end.

This is actually not unusual at all... Sussex Hamilton has not allowed backpacks during the school day for as long as I can remember. Students are free to bring a backpack to school in the morning and take it home after school, but during the school day it has to stay in the locker and students carry whichever books they need to class with them.

It seems like a good rule, since there is a limited amount of space and 30+ backpacks in addition to the students would not be very manageable...

At first I thought this was some nonsense about not even being allowed to carry your stuff to and from school in a back pack. When I attended school I didn't really remember anyone carrying a back pack from class to class. I went to my locker in between each class, and got my stuff. In an instance where it made no sense to travel to the other side of the school I just had to carry double the books, and stuff. Some people also shared multiple lockers so they could keep their books near their classes.

If we are going to ban backpacks, could we also ban teachers from requiring notebooks, folders, binders (why does any class need a 2 inch binder), textbooks and multiple pens and pencils brought to every class? Kids wouldn't need backpacks if they didn't have so much stuff to carry. I remember taking 3 books, a pencil, and a folder with some loose leaf paper to my 1st 3 classes of the day. My 90 pound freshman daughter had a backpack that weighed 23 pounds.

I appreciate reading differing viewpoints on an issue such as this.

I will point out that in the not to distant future text books in hard copy will be obsolute. Perhaps all those binders may be obsolute too, I'm not sure.

Sarah,
It's about the dead tree issue - cost. Also, most avid readers I know have switched to e-readers, including my wife and daughter. I'm a current events guy and read almost entirely online for the convenience. The same point is true for the district's online school e-achieve. Convenience, cost, and flexibility. Those are just my viewpoints sprinkled with some of the obvious. Thanks for sharing the viewpoint.