Next school term, each student in the Dallas Independent School District (DISD) will be required to use a clear or mesh backpack to ensure student safety.
Yet, there is no consensus among education experts as to whether the see-through backpack policy shores up school safety protocols, according to the Dallas Observer.
DISD instituted a clear backpack policy for all secondary students (grades 6-12) for the 2022-2023 school year a few months after the deadly Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde in May of last year. This meant students were either required to use the clear backpack provided by the district or a qualifying backpack of their own.
The move was touted by the district as a safety measure “to better ensure student and staff safety,” according to the initial announcement.
As The Dallas Express previously reported, this same policy has since been extended to all DISD students (grades K-12) next fall.
DISD is also no stranger to firearm incidents, with one student shot in the arm in the parking lot of a North Dallas high school back in March.
The struggle to keep DISD campuses safe for students and staff has been coupled with other woes, including poor student achievement scores, as previously reported in The Dallas Express.
After the killing of 19 children and two adults in the Uvalde mass shooting, school districts across Texas, and even the nation, began reassessing their safety protocols. But not everyone is in agreement over what to do.
Some, like National Education Association-Dallas President Sheila Walker, feel that a clear backpack policy may make it harder for students to bring a firearm to school but might also make them feel like they are the problem.
“Requiring clear backpacks does make some families and students feel that they’re being blamed for the state’s inaction on guns,” Walker explained, according to the Dallas Observer.
Others, like Rep. Nate Schatzline (R-Fort Worth), argue changes should be made to school campuses themselves by locking all but one entrance that would be guarded by armed police.
Tactics like clear backpacks, metal detectors, and armed guards might be detrimental to students’ sense of well-being, suggest experts like Paige Duggins-Clay, a chief legal analyst from the nonprofit Intercultural Development Research Association.
“When we tell students that we don’t trust them or respect them, it makes it very hard to have that go both ways and prevent what could be behavior that could be intervened in early on — and stopped — [from escalating] into something really, really unsafe,” Duggins-Clay explained, according to the Dallas Observer.
Moreover, Duggins-Clay said that she has not yet seen any evidence to suggest that a clear backpack policy effectively promotes safety.
In fact, even as district officials announced the wider rollout of the clear backpack policy, DISD acknowledged that it “alone does not ensure complete security.”