With the topic of school safety on the forefront of people’s minds, the San Diego Unified School District is taking action to try to make all high school campuses, including UC High, safer and will soon be building a security fence in an effort to make students, staff, and the campus safer.

   Principal Mike Paredes said, “The construction is scheduled to start in June of this year and is supposed to wrap up in December of 2024. However, construction often goes longer than expected.”

   “The part that’s going to be a challenge [for the following school year] is maintaining access to the student parking lot for students that might arrive as late as second period. We know that some arrive as late as third period so it’s going to be up to us to communicate with students and families that they need to arrive by a certain time,” said Paredes.

   Associate Principal Alex Villalobos said, “I am looking forward to having a new security fence because it will improve safety on our campus. Obviously, year one with the new fence will come with some unknown challenges, but I am certain our school community will communicate any obstacles and we will collaborate with all members to come up with solutions.”

   The goal of this fence is to create a single point of entry. Paredes said, “The idea behind a single point of entry is that there is only one place where a visitor to a campus reports to and actually has access to the campus. This is a more secure approach to campus security because right now we have multiple points of access on our campus.”

   Custodial Manager Jack Weaver said, “My responsibility is to keep you guys safe. I’m okay with having more responsibility, but why it’s being built saddens me. I can remember a time when there wasn’t even a fence to the gates at the schools I went to. The front of the school was wide open. You could walk onto the campus freely so it saddens me to know that you’re going to grow up in very tentative times.”

   Villalobos said, “We will have to create a new procedure once the fence is completed. As always, we will accept feedback for suggestions and improvements.” Paredes said, “It’s going to be up to the administration, students and families to communicate with each other, as soon as our construction is done, about how it’s going to affect our school community However, knowing that it’s not going to be complete until second semester, we’re going to learn quite a bit.”

   Another challenge Paredes and the team has had to consider throughout this process is staying conscious of UC’s visual appeal. Paredes said, “What we were very adamant about is that anything that’s on the front of our school, we want it to be decorative so it still looks nice. We don’t want it to look uninviting. We’ve expressed to the team that we want everything that you see when you come up to the campus to have some visual appeal to it.”

   Paredes said, “It’s changed the way a lot of schools are navigating, but it’s with the idea of making it harder for just anyone to get onto a campus. We all know that fence’s aren’t foolproof, but it sends a message.”