Students waiting in line on the first day of second semester to get their tardy slips.
Photo creds: Jack Wilson
Snow days, delayed exams, and different class schedules have introduced the spring semester, making this new year relatively hectic for Watauga High School students. Adding on to these chaotic early months, the new tardy policy was met with some dissatisfaction from the student body.
The recently-implemented tardy policy states that if students are not in the school by 8:30 a.m., they will have to stop by the office to receive a tardy slip. This is to make it easier for the school to count tardies and to get an accurate count of tardy students. Scott Strickler, the principal of Watauga High School, worked hard to make this rule happen, making sure he got opinions from different sources.
“I talked to department chairs that I meet with once a month and I talked to Student Council as well,” Strickler said.
The tardy issue began about two months ago when administration noticed that over 100 kids were tardy everyday. After noticing this problem for about a month, Strickler decided to take action.
“When I saw this issue, I met with supervisors and the assistant principals of the school to discuss what we could do,” said Strickler. “Every school has students that are tardy; that’s just how life goes. But 100 kids out of 1600? I thought something had to be done.”
At first, this policy started off a little rough. The first day of this new rule, 160 students were tardy, and many tardies were due to heavy traffic from rain. Students were confused and upset when they were stuck in a 30-minute line trying to get to class, causing them to be even more late and miss crucial content. Some were also frustrated that they did not feel properly warned prior to the policy adjustment.
“I got a ton of great feedback from students that were waiting in the line to get their tardy slips, like ‘when it rains, the line gets extremely backed up,’ which was good to know,” Strickler said. “Students were upset about the amount of class time they were missing because of traffic, and I was upset about it as well, so I decided to not count the tardies from that day.”
Despite the hectic first day, the tardy policy seemed to work effectively over the next few days, causing students to realize what would happen in the morning if they did not arrive at school before 8:30 am.
“The first day, there were over 150 kids tardy, but the second day, there were only 27 kids tardy, which was a drastic change,” Strickler said.
This new tardy policy came as a shock to the student body, but it has caused a huge difference in tardies. By the second day, there were already fewer than 30 kids late to school, hopefully implicating a future of reduced tardiness among students.
“The goal is to get students in class. However, I think it’s important to know that sometimes we get up in the morning and life happens. A guardian can always call or email the school for an excused tardy,” Strickler said. “There are ten thousand things that could occur. We will not penalize students for having a legitimate reason to be late.”
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