School officials and parents across the nation are turning an increasingly critical eye on the time- honored tradition of voters' casting ballots in the gymnasiums and hallways of neighborhood school buildings while classes go on as usual just a few yards away.
Citing a list of safety concerns, many officials are opting to keep youngsters home on Nov. 4, Election Day.
"School districts across the country now spend millions of dollars each year on controlling access to buildings with locked doors and surveillance cameras to keep strangers out," said Kenneth Trump, president of the National School Safety and Security Services, a Cleveland-based advocacy group. "In a post-Columbine, post-9/11 world, we shouldn't be opening the doors at our schools on Election Day and just hoping everything will be OK."
In Maryland, state law requires public schools to be closed on Election Day.
The decision to cancel classes on Election Day in the Rockland public schools in Massachusetts stemmed from an accident - an elderly driver, on his way to vote in the state's presidential primary on Feb. 5, struck and critically injured an 8-year-old girl outside an elementary school in a neighboring district.
The accident and the response by Rockland officials caught the attention of a PTA president in Aurora, Ill., a mother of two whose worries about the use of schools as polling places prompted the district to give students the day off on Election Day.
"The impetus for our resolution was simply a parent who asked, 'Does it make sense for the security measures we have in place at our schools to be abandoned on Election Day?' " said Robin Church, president of the Parents' Council at Indian Prairie School District 204 in Aurora, a suburb of Chicago. "We all agreed that student safety was paramount every day, and that includes Election Day."
At the Smithtown Central School District in New York, Election Day will find teachers and administrators gathered at a professional development conference, while the district's 11,000 students enjoy a holiday from classes.
"The decision to have a nonattendance day in November coinciding with Election Day was a no-brainer," said Edward Ehmann, Smithtown's superintendent of schools. "Our parking lots are already crowded with people coming and going on a regular school day, and this election is expected to have a record voter turnout."
