The majority of Fairfax County parents support installing surveillance cameras in their students’ high school cafeterias and other areas of campus, hoping to enhance school safety and discourage food fights. The Fairfax County School Board is set to weigh a policy change Monday that would allow — but not require — its 27 high school principals to stick the cameras in “hot spots” around school buildings, an idea that was proposed by the system’s own principals.
“During lunchtime, in our common spaces, and in passing up and down our hallways, large numbers of students are under minimum supervision. … Students report to us that drug transactions occur in our crowded cafeteria spaces because of the anonymity provided by large crowds,” the county’s High School Principals Association wrote in a memo to the board earlier this fall.
