About 20 people including school administration staff, parents and students attended a SOSS PAC meeting Tuesday night to review options and come up with a solution.

72 small lockers will be obtained and placed in gym change rooms for males and females and groups of students will use these during class times. This will prevent items from backpacks going astray.

Students and parents are encourage to look to other options if heavy loads and backpacks are causing problems with students.

The option of closing the West Gym and putting lockers in at a huge cost was eliminated meaning that no class space is lost to programming.

Vice-Principal Tracy Harrington says the meeting went well and everyone had an opportunity to discuss the temporary problem.

Once the east wing is constructed and the school re-opens in the fall of next year – all of these locker problems will be behind the students and school.

Principal Cate Turner writes: “we have a good compromise.  Instead of installing lockers in the small gym (expensive, disruptive), we will install ‘mini-lockers’ (like the ones that you find in community pool change rooms) in both the boys and girls change rooms.  That way they can lock up their valuables during PE class.  We will also have an application process for the 68 lockers we actually have – we will make decisions based on textbook load etc.  For any parents or students who don`t get a locker through that process, the school will offer to buy them a `rolling backpack`. “