Texas District Requiring Students to Wear IDs for Safety
"ID cards have been issued to every student at Marshall High School and Marshall Junior High School," Marshall ISD Superintendent Jerry Gibson said. "This is 100 percent a safety matter. This is an additional safety measure we can take to keep our kids safe while at school."
- By Jessica Davis
- February 07, 2019
Marshall Independent School District has recently implemented a new policy requiring students to wear their student ID for safety purposes.
MISD Superintendent Jerry Gibson told the Longview News-Journal that all students at Marshall High School and Marshall Junior High School are required to wear their student ID on a lanyard around their neck during school hours.
"ID cards have been issued to every student at Marshall High School and Marshall Junior High School," Gibson said. "This is 100 percent a safety matter. This is an additional safety measure we can take to keep our kids safe while at school."
Gibson said that the new measure was prompted by a recent incident on Marshall High School’s campus.
"This came about because we had a situation in the fall where a student came in one morning, just walked into the school with the other students, hid out and waited, then had a fight with a student," Gibson said. "This person wasn't even a student. I asked how he got in with nobody noticing that he didn't have a student ID, and I realized that our students weren't required to wear their IDs visible on them at all times."
According to Gibson, they also found out that the badge machine at the high school was no longer functional.
"We ordered two new machines, one for the high school and one for the junior high, and we ordered a bunch of cards and lanyards," Gibson said. "This is just another opportunity for us to keep our kids and campus safe following a direct incident that happened on campus. That was a prime example."
Students found not wearing their ID in their lanyard will be punished. The first violation will result in a warning and the student will have to wear a visitor sticker. The consequences for not wearing a lanyard escalate to three days at In School Suspension on the fifth infraction.
Gibson said the new ID requirement isn’t meant to be a punishment but to increase campus safety.
"We do have a buzz in system now at the high school, but what if someone opened a back door for someone else," he said. "This is just another way to ensure our students are as safe as they can be."
About the Author
Jessica Davis is the Associate Content Editor for 1105 Media.