Blair faces possible shortage of over 300 lockers

Blair has a potential shortage of lockers, and students may be asked to share lockers or give up unused ones in the upcoming school year, according to Business Manager Anne Alban.

Blair may be short by as many as 300 lockers, which could mean that about ten percent of students will not be assigned a locker when school starts in August. It is the first time since Blair moved to its new building that such a severe locker shortage has existed.

If the shortage is not resolved by the time school starts, said Alban, all students will be asked to share lockers and to give up their lockers if they are not using them. If students have to share lockers, additional locks or dividers will most likely not be installed because of the lockers' small size.

According to Alban, Blair's locker shortage was anticipated last year, and school officials have been working to get temporary lockers installed at Blair since this past spring. Alban remains determined in her efforts to relieve the shortage before school starts. "I still haven't given up on trying to get temporary lockers," she said, adding that the temporary lockers could be installed on the third floor.

Alban attributes the locker shortage to both Blair's increasing population and Northwood High School's current status as a holding school. When Northwood reopens as a regular high school, incoming Blair freshmen will have the option of attending Northwood, which would help reduce Blair's population and alleviate the locker shortage.

According to Assistant Principal Carole Working, Blair's current population is 3,241, which has already exceeded the county's projection for Blair's population by almost a hundred students. Additional students who recently moved to the Blair area could add another hundred students to the incoming freshmen class alone, said Working.

However, the county projections are often short because they do not take into account students who transfer to Blair after the start of the school year, Alban explained.

Alban sees the current overcrowding and locker shortage as ongoing issues until Northwood reopens in fall 2004. Along with the locker shortage, Blair also has a shortage of student parking spaces, she added. "There is enough parking for faculty but not enough for all the students who want them," said Alban.

Becky Humphrey, Business Manager at Sherwood High School, believes that Blair's locker and student parking shortages could be related. Unlike Blair, said Humphrey, Sherwood has enough parking spaces for all seniors who want them, and those seniors usually store their books in their car, reducing the need for lockers.

Currently, the county superintendent's office does not know of any other high school in the county that has a locker shortage, so Blair may be the only high school with this problem.

In an informal July 31 survey of the other 22 Montgomery County public high schools, the business managers of 16 high schools said that their schools did not have locker shortages. The business managers at the rest of the high schools could not be reached.