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Faced with a growing number of contradictory edicts, members of staff from lower-secondary institutions in poor neighborhoods resorted to methods which could be considered as paradoxical. Pursuing the “school for all” ideal, they sought to enhance openness, to keep as many students as possible in school, to motivate struggling students, and at times to work in partnership with local educational partners. However, following the very powerful and ever constant presupposition that certain young people are uneducable and/or unmanageable, thereby epitomizing a potential risk to an institution, members of staff (largely ambivalent) were inclined to focus their efforts on both “filtering out” and excluding students. This often inadvertently turned their school into a closed environment.