Too Bad So Sad: You’re Late

During a recent all-school assembly, it was announced that the School would be implementing a new tardy policy. A collective groan was let out by the students as they heard this policy included after-school detentions. Additionally, the administration stated that students who received several tardies would be given a Saturday detention. There were whispers regarding how harsh and over-the-top this new policy was after the assembly concluded.

There are many questions about the new tardy policy, which is meant to encourage students to be punctual. Students who end up with three tardies in a semester will have to serve after-school detention. Weekend detentions occur if the behavior warrants it, not after a student has received a certain amount of after-school detentions. Input from both students and parents will be considered when scheduling these weekend detentions. 

Hannah Niles, the ninth-grade Health teacher, and tenth-grade Dean, explains her opinions about the reason behind the new tardy policy: “…it was shocking to see how often kids were showing up late or leaving for 20 minutes in the middle of class, skipping classes to go off campus, all that kind of stuff.” There needs to be a way to hold students accountable for showing up late, and this led to the new tardy policy.

The new tardy policy is meant to keep students in class, and the administration thought that the best way of doing that would be to make it extremely strict. Niles believes that the new tardy policies are “transactional.” She hopes students will recognize that they “don’t want to spend their afternoon at school, so they’re going to show up to class on time.” 

Students still need clarification with many parts of the new tardy policy since this is the first year it has been implemented. One of the biggest question marks for students is the Saturday detentions. It is similar to a regular detention and will be one hour long. Weekend detentions will be determined by the severity of the offending student’s actions. If the action was more severe, then it would be shown in the punishment given. Dylan Batra, a sophomore, gave his opinion: “You can end up with quite a few tardies without even meaning to, and those then lead to weekend detention, which just takes up time.” In response, Niles believes if weekend detentions take up that much time in your weekend, why not just show up to class on time? 

Many will continue to complain about the new tardy policy, including myself, but this change will benefit the community. The faculty’s opinion is that the new tardy policy will help their goal of educating students. The feeling within the school is that this new tardy policy will not affect most students and that detentions are a fair punishment for those who show up late to their classes. However, the feedback from students is that the amount of tardies that cause detention should be increased from three to five tardies. This way students who show up late due to traffic or having to use the restroom during a passing period won’t be as worried about showing up two or three minutes late. 

This change will help the school with some of its issues. However, I agree that the amount of tardies that lead to detentions is too few. To balance the tardy policy, the number of tardies that warrant detention should be five, not three. While I agree with Niles that the School should be stricter on students who show up late, there is still more work to be done to find the perfect balance for this new policy.