SIKESTON - After the final bell had rung to close the school year, the halls, classrooms and parking lots of high schools quickly emptied. But this wasn't so for all of the lockers, with some students leaving behind unwanted clothes and bookbags; books they didn't return to the library; and moldy, green, two-month-old peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
"It's trash, basically," said Aquilla Blissett, head maintenance custodian at Scott County Central. "They just leave a lot of paper and there may be shoes, there may be clothes -- a variety of things, but nothing specific."
Coats, sweatshirts, and torn up notebooks and backpacks are among the items left behind most often at New Madrid County Central, said high school principal John Garner. "It's stuff that just got left," he said. Or, it could also be items like pictures, jewelry or "anything that can fall between the cracks."
So what happens to it all?
"We try to salvage as much as possible," said Sheila Temple, high school secretary at Portageville High School. "But a lot of times it's not salvageable and we throw it away."
For instance, clothing items are brought to lost and found, where they tend to be kept until the end of summer school. If they still aren't claimed they will be donated somewhere, such as DAEOC, or simply thrown away.
NMCC has a policy to keep things in lost and found for two weeks. The school keeps "anything that looks like it could be cleaned up if a child came back to get it," Garner said. But notebooks, pencils and other items are thrown away.
After the two week period, administration will wash the clothing. If it looks suitable, it will be donated somewhere, such as Goodwill. Pictures and jewelry are saved, because they are small and of value, Garner said.
Sikeston Senior High also donates appropriate clothing to families in need or organizations that will accept them. Typically, staff will suggest a recipient for the items.
All schools return books to either the library or appropriate teacher. "We end up finding a lot of lost books at the end of the year," Garner said. "That's probably the best part about cleaning out lockers -- we find our lost textbooks."
Any sports equipment, like ball mitts or bats, is saved. "If its got their name on it, we'll hang on to it," Garner said. And some schools, like Sikeston and Portageville, will filter it to the gym for physical education classes.
At Portageville High School, coaches will take some of the clothes and wash them to keep on hand for students who have forgotten their clothes for physical education class, Temple said. Coaches may also identify some of the forgotten items. "Lots of times, a coach will recognize (clothes or equipment) as a certain student's and see that it is returned to them," she added.
And things that are never claimed by their owner may find a new home. Portageville students who are around school for the summer -- either for summer school or other activities -- may trifle through the lost and found items, finding treasures amongst what their peers considered junk, Temple said.
But not all locker leftovers are kept for students or coaches to claim. For instance, students at Scott County Central have a designated time to clean out their lockers the final two days of school. Trash cans are placed in the halls and students leave the locker doors open when they are through.
"Anything in the lockers (at that point), to our knowledge, is something they don't want and we take it out to the dumpsters," Blissett said.
None of the staff have ever had the urge to claim or sneak anything home with them that Blissett can recall, either. He said: "It's not like it's anything that somebody would think 'this is good, I'm going to take it home with me."