At Wayzata High School in Plymouth, Minnesota, hallways often become crowded as 3,700 students move between classes. So when planning a recent renovation of one floor, school officials decided to permanently remove the rows of waist-high lockers that stood in the middle of the corridors.

Although students used to gather at the lockers to chat briefly with friends or pull out homework for the evening in advance, in reality no one was actually using them for storage anymore.

"At some point, students generally felt there wasn't much of a need for lockers," said Principal Scott Gengler. When he first became principal ten years ago, ninth graders were assigned lockers but rarely used them. Now, all students can request a locker if needed, but only about 100 do so each year.

Like Wayzata High School, schools across the country are removing lockers or abandoning the traditional practice of assigning a personal locker to every student. According to experts in K-12 building design, new high schools are increasingly moving away from the classic "one locker per student" layout. This trend existed before the pandemic forced school closures, and the pandemic further accelerated the lockers' "exit."

For students, this change makes sense—they rarely used their lockers anyway, and with so many school resources and assignments now digital, everything needed for the day fits easily in a backpack.

Still, for educators and parents, the trend marks a sentimental end of an era. Their own high school memories are filled with decorating lockers, passing notes through the slits in the doors, and meeting friends at their lockers between classes.

"People's memories of lockers are usually quite vivid," said Kipton Smilie, a professor of education at Missouri Western State University. Smilie has written papers exploring the connection between the disappearance of social spaces in high schools and the decline in locker usage.

"A lot of our social life in school used to revolve around these lockers," he said.

New uses for locker space

McMillan Pazdan Smith, an architecture firm based in South Carolina, is currently overseeing five new middle school projects. According to Ben Thompson, the firm's K-12 practice director and accredited learning environment planner, none of these projects use the traditional "one locker per student" model.

Thompson said the decline in demand for lockers has been an ongoing trend in the Southeast over the past decade. He added that colleagues across the country have reported similar changes.

"The key is how to design facilities so they can serve their best purpose."

— Ben Thompson, K-12 Director at McMillan Pazdan Smith

Architects and planners no longer assume every student needs a locker. Instead, they ask school officials: Should lockers be for all students, some students, or not at all? This question is raised early in the design process because lockers and the space needed to open them take up hallway area and can affect student traffic flow.

"They really do affect the geometry of the hallway in multiple ways," Thompson said.

Spring Valley High School in Columbia, South Carolina, part of Richland County School District Two, plans to renovate later this year or early next year, removing the rows of waist-high lockers in the middle of the hallways. In their place will be collaborative spaces with modern furniture, suitable for small or large group class projects and for student socializing.

Thompson said the goal is to make the space "more useful to students in their daily learning lives."

He noted that building a school without a locker for every student does not necessarily save money. While the required floor area may be reduced and locker purchase costs may decrease, classrooms may need additional storage space, or more areas in hallways may need to be designated for collaborative spaces. Additionally, athletic programs, music classes, or career and technical education courses may still require specialized lockers.

"The key is how to design facilities so they can serve their best purpose," Thompson reiterated.

Tim Simp, an education learning designer at global design firm DLR Group and a former school district superintendent, said the traditional use of lockers is waning, with some schools shifting to an on-demand model where students can request one if needed. But in some schools that restrict backpacks in classrooms, students still use lockers as they always have.

Simp said whether and how students use lockers "has become a major topic in school design discussions today."

From popularity to decline

There are several explanations for the sudden drop in popularity of school lockers. But the most common reason is the shift to 1-to-1 devices, online learning platforms, and other digital resources, which makes it easy for students to carry everything they need for the day in a backpack.

Students also say that with limited time between classes, they don't want to take a detour to their lockers. This "passing time" is strictly managed by school administrators to maximize instructional time while ensuring students arrive at their next class on time.

Jane McAlpine, a senior at Arcadia High School in Phoenix, Arizona, said she has never used a locker in high school because the school never offered students the option—even though lockers line the hallways. Like her classmates, she carries all her books, notebooks, and laptop in her backpack. If students bring extra bags with sports equipment or other items, they often leave them in their first-period classroom and retrieve them after school.

If McAlpine had a locker, she might use it for textbooks. "But then again, sometimes I'm already late because I'm running across campus," she said.

Educators believe another trend contributing to the "uselessness" of lockers is the general reluctance of teenagers to wear coats. Even at Wayzata High School in Minnesota, where winter temperatures often drop below freezing, Principal Gengler said he "still doesn't understand why our kids don't wear jackets."

He also mentioned that when he explains to new ninth-grade parents that the school doesn't provide a locker for every student, the first question they often ask is: Where will my child's coat go? Gengler then tells them: "Well, that will be the next topic you discuss with your child."

Making room for learning and socializing

As school officials and design firms think about transforming traditional locker areas into collaborative learning spaces, they are also prioritizing the addition of flexible areas where teenagers enjoy socializing with friends.

Missouri Western State University professor Smilie believes this consideration is important given the role lockers have played in the social development and experiences of high school students in the past.

"In the past, at least during those five minutes between classes, you had to interact with people—whether you wanted to or not—but at least you were physically close to others and had to learn to handle that situation."

— Kipton Smilie, Professor of Education at Missouri Western State University

Smilie's research found that lockers in American high schools first became popular after the 1918 influenza pandemic, when schools were trying to slow the spread of viruses and disease. Storing students' coats, backpacks, and lunchboxes in lockers helped achieve that goal. At the time, there was also opposition, with some arguing that rows of steel lockers were unsightly.

Over time, however, lockers gradually became an accepted fixture of school decor, even appearing frequently as props in films about high school life in the late 20th century. Still, some administrators worried that students might use lockers to hide prohibited items.

Smilie said memories of the high school locker era can include positive experiences, such as arranging to meet friends at lockers between classes or decorating locker doors with posters of favorite bands; they can also evoke negative experiences, such as bullying, a lack of social belonging, or anxiety over forgetting locker combinations.

Additionally, lockers once facilitated forced social interactions and negotiations—students had to share lockers with others or ask someone to move in a crowded hallway to access their belongings.

"In the past, at least during those five minutes between classes, you had to interact with people—whether you wanted to or not—but at least you were physically close to others and had to learn to handle that situation," Smilie said.

Thompson of McMillan Pazdan Smith said that in current school building design, community spaces are built for academic purposes and also serve as social hubs.

"Kids are kids," Thompson said. "They still crave being with and socializing with their peers." When a space can serve both instructional and social purposes, "that's the best state."

As for the lockers removed at Wayzata High School, some were recycled, some were sold, and the rest will be redeployed to other buildings in the Wayzata Public Schools district.

Principal Gengler has been observing how student interactions between classes have changed on the two floors (out of four) where lockers have been removed. He said there is no difference in student behavior in the hallways without lockers.

"The social dynamics haven't changed at all," Gengler said. He is considering placing high-top tables in the locker-free hallways to encourage students to chat with peers between classes.

Now, the only thing he still wishes for is getting students to wear their coats.

Greg Lynch (director of data and visuals) and Sean Lucas (visual editor) contributed to this article.