One of Iowa’s largest and oldest high schools is enacting new security measures. Administrators at Davenport’s Central High School are banning backpacks and book bags from classrooms as of next week.
Students will still be able to haul their belongings to the school in backpacks but can’t take them into classes; the bags will have to be stuffed into lockers. Students complain, time between classes has already been cut from eight minutes to seven, making it tougher to get around the four-story multi-building school.
School officials say the ban will help keep weapons out of classrooms. Davenport Central is more than a century old and has an enrollment of about 16-hundred.