Fences are fine. Especially for young kids near the playground and streets.

Except the fact you need to maintain it (which will be in the form of a replacement every 73 years when enough kids get stabbed by it) and it needs to have enough exit points in case of emergency. It shouldn’t funnel everyone to one spot in the front.

My schools were fenced in. Nothing threatening or intimidating, it was just chain link with a gate somewhere along it. Keeps the troublesome kids from running off, makes sure everyone can hear the bell, keeps weirdos from coming in during school. And when the school is right next to a forest, that’s just sensible.

I like a fence. But if you’re going to do it, don’t make it look like a damn prison. Whatever happened to a nice brick wall with some pointy ironwork on top of it? It serves the same function as a fence topped in razor wire. But it provides that function without making the place look like a prison. I know it’s way more expensive than a chain link fence. But damn. What is the value of the damage done to the souls of all the students that have to go to school behind razor wire. All schools should be surrounded by big brick walls with pointy bits of cast iron on them. Now it’s classy and doesn’t feel like the fucking state penitentiary.

Yeah but it depends.
An elementary school near me recently replaced their chest-height chain-link fence with a 10ft steel bar fence with spikes on top. There’s some benefits to a fence, but the spikes just make it seem menacing. And I guess more abstractly, it communicates that school is a dangerous place that’s walled-off from the rest of the world rather than a place that’s just like any other part of society. This is in the USA, I should mention, so maybe the cynical message is more accurate.

Yes, and barbed wire, Czech hedgehogs, guard towers with snipers.

Jokes aside apart from preventing a ball flying into traffic during recess what are we trying to achieve?

I’m on the fence about it.

I’m in favor of them. Just from a utilitarian standpoint, it helps to be able to demarcate the bounds of a school so that you don’t have random people just wandering up throughout the day mistaking a schoolyard for a park and causing disruptions. Moreover, it gives kids the freedom to roam relatively unsupervised during recess/break time without worry of them wandering off somewhere. In densely-populated areas, it’s basically a necessity to fence off athletic fields as well to prevent any accidental damage to nearby property if a ball goes flying.

There’s a lot that can be done to make school buildings feel less prison like, but a fence is just a fence and is innocuous enough.

It’s different everywhere in the US. I grew up in California. Graduated HS 1989. My elementary and high schools were completely fenced in while the middle school i attended was not at the time, but has been for some time now. Even in high school it was a closed campus and only Seniors were allowed to leave at lunch if their parents signed off on it. It was called “Senior Privileges.” I had a friend that went to Highschool about 40mi from me and they had an open campus and everyone could leave at lunch. No clue how those decisions were made, but his HS had a literal smoking section on campus for students. The 80s were a different time.

FEMA has plans to utilize schools as mass holding pens for something like 5 million people if necessary, so its like a dual use thing.

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