( Link to share petition: https://tinyurl.com/ydesmphk  )

My name is Michael Hernandez and I'm making a petition against the McKinney Independent School District located in Collin county Texas. I encourage you to read the petition before signing your name!

Although it is not 100% confirmed, or at least at the time of making this I personally have not heard it from a 100% credible source. I am making this petition on behalf of the student bodies that attend McKinney ISD high schools (McKinney High School, McKinney North High School, McKinney Boyd High School). I'm making this petition prematurely to get ahead of the problem and to try and be proactive instead of reactive. Just to be clear the problem is the alleged new rule being put into place at the start of the 2018-2019 school year by McKinney ISD. This alleged rule states...

"As a district, all of our McKinney ISD high school students will be required to wear their ID this year either on a lanyard around their necks or clipped on where it is visible for staff to see. As in previous years, IDs will be required for students to purchase tickets for school events such as the annual Homecoming carnival and check out textbooks. Additionally, students that arrive late to school will be required to show their IDs before they will be admitted into the building and students will be required show IDs each day as they purchase breakfast or lunch. It will be very important for all students to have their ID every day at school so please begin talking with your child now about this new expectation."

I'm now going to explain why this new expectation set by the McKinney Independent School District is absurd and absolutely useless.

1. Lets Start off with something minor. I know this rule is meant to keep us student safe from any unwanted visitors, however the fact that "students will be required show IDs each day as they purchase breakfast or lunch." is unneeded and honestly stupid. My reasons for feeling this way are simple. From my experiences in the lunch lines at MHS, the line is already very long and takes forever. This is not due to anything but the sheer amount of children in each line, the lunch workers do their jobs to perfection. However, by adding another tiny detail that may add a second or two to getting your food, you are increasing the total time students must wait in line. Think of it like traffic, one car 8 miles ahead of you could hit their brake to slow down just a bit causing the cars behind them to slow down which will slowly trickle towards you causing a traffic jam. Lets say on a good day only 5 children forget their cards in the burger line, then that means they punch in their number, then the lunch worker asks for their ID. They explain that they don't have it so now that student doesn't get a lunch (or they get the meal you get when you don't have money in your account. this is something that needs to be specified when you make a rule like this). So in total it could take about 1-2 minutes to solve the situation and get this one student his or her food, multiply that by 5 you get 5-10 minutes spent getting 5 kids their food in the 30 minute lunch period, and that's just assuming only 5 students forget their ID.

2. This is the big reason I am making this petition, and honestly something that makes me sick. I personally believe the school district is doing this not to protect us students, but to protect them self incase of the event a tragedy occurs. Some people may believe this is an absurd statement to make, however I believe it is perfectly within the realms of reality. For instance, lets say worst comes to worst and a MISD high school gets shot up by a school shooter / terrorist. The school district will be able to say something of the like of, "We took measures to try and prevent such a tragedy, however it was not enough." I want to prevent this by pushing the school district to make a change that will work the first time. Having students wear an ID card will not change a thing other than give the district something to hide behind incase something does happen. I am NOT against the school district. I would happily oblige to any security measures they emplace. However, only if i feel like it will actually do something. One example of how the ID card will fail the stop a potential threat from entering the building is on the McKinney High School campus about 50% of the school is made of glass, obviously i'm exaggerating, but i'm trying to get my point across. If an attacker truly wanted to enter the building they could easily break a pane of glass and come in, no ID needed. Here is what the front of the school will look like once the new construction is complete, https://tinyurl.com/y9glk4cp . As you can see almost the entire front of the school is glass, this isn't even showing the entrance by the day care playground or the back of the school or behind the school by the cafeteria.

I personally believe that instead of the district making a contingency plan for tragedies, they should have the student, teachers, and the district as a whole come up with a solutions that the majority agrees with. I encourage my fellow peers to sign this petition if you have any doubts about the alleged new policy. 

Thank you for taking the time to read this

- MHS Senior Michael Hernandez