After decades of use, the hallway lockers are no longer part of the Armijo experience.
According to Principal Sheila Smith, there were many factors that contributed to this decision.
During the summer, the school is put under a deep cleaning and major organizing. The
lockers take three weeks to clean out and to reset the locks.

In spite of that, the majority don’t use their lockers regularly, even if they signed up for one and had it assigned. It was agreed that the time and energy spent on maintaining the lockers should be used for other projects, like the construction of the solar panels in the parking lot or the PE lockers.

Armijo is the only high school in the district that has lockers and the other schools are
doing just fine without them. There doesn’t appear to be an actual need for the lockers and
there has not been that much request to bring the lockers back.

Athletes are some of the few students who benefit consistently from the lockers.
Carrying around equipment puts a strain on the student’s back, especially the ones that play
sports that require heavy equipment like baseball. Now, several student athletes leave their
equipment in a teacher’s classrooms so that they don’t have to carry it all day. The problems
with this are that it puts the equipment at risk of being stolen and causes clutter within the
classroom.

According to Ms. Smith, the new PE lockers will be bigger and will be able to fit big
equipment, like baseball bats. After the renovation is finished, there will be a discussion as to
whether or not to sign specific ones out to athletes. Some believe this would be fitting because
all the sports take place in that end of campus.