“No Ma’am.”

Shelley Justin, language arts teacher, remembers asking the janitor installing the door to her new classroom if he could add the propper.

“He told me it was against policy,” Justin said. “They’re not allowing me to do that.”

No door in the new STEM wing will have a propper, and the district is setting new guidelines to regulate their use.

Associate Principal Dr. Stephen Hankins said that doors can be propped open in one scenario.

“As long as there’s a teacher or an adult in the room that can dislodge the door,” Dr. Hankins said. “It’s about fire code.”    

Dr. Hankins said teachers typically do not follow the policy, not to go against it, but because they’ve never heard of it.

“Usually if they don’t, it’s because they don’t know it’s a guideline,” Dr. Hankins said. “I have found that it’s slim to none that people would know it’s wrong and actually do it. Usually someone says ‘You can’t do that’ and they say ‘Oh, sorry, won’t happen again.’”

Ed Bolton, chemistry teacher, felt similarly.

“I have not heard anything about this policy,” Bolton said.

Bolton said while the policy could be useful in the event of an intruder, keeping his door closed during all of class would be impractical, especially when his students are performing experiments inside.

“Today, for example, we were doing a chemistry experiment that made some obnoxious smelling fumes,” Bolton said. “We had the hoods on and the hoods do a good job of driving those fumes away. But they do a better job if the doors are propped open which allows a better airflow.”