The San Juan school district has reversed its plans to remove hall lockers from the school.

Instead of removing lockers this summer the district has agreed to install better lockers in freshman, sophomore and junior halls. In addition the district will carry out other renovations around the school.

“They are going to rip out the old lockers and replace them with new ones” said Principal Brian Ginter.

Although replacing lockers will be costly, the schoolwide renovations as a whole are expected to cost “half a million to a million dollars,” he said.

The district originally planned to take out all of the lockers to conform with the standards of other schools in the district where lockers have already been removed. But with all of the other improvements that will be funded Measure N, the $350 million district-wide bond measure approved by voters in 2012, the cost of lockers was seen as relatively low.

“I personally would not have frowned upon removing the lockers,” said Ginter.  “But concerns raised by the students and parents led to the district allocating funds for the locker project.”  

Unlike many of the other schools in the district, Rio is not a block school, which may have only four periods a day. Lockers are in higher demand as they hold books for the student’s six-period schedule.

“I’m glad that Rio is going to keep the lockers because they’re important to students every day,” said Sanam Taghibeik. “I use my locker to keep my phone and textbooks.”

The district still plans to renovate the physical education locker rooms, including installing new lockers.