The Trials of Tardies and Varying Perspectives on New Rules

A student checks into school after arriving late. Late arrivals are required to officially check in before entering the building. Photo Cred: Brayden Howard

Brayden Howard, Sports Desk Lead for The Powderhorn

The new school year came with a myriad of new policy changes and alterations. While most years have an issue or two that becomes the focus of the admin, this year they took up the difficult issue of reforming our absence and tardy system. The flagship of these new policies was the restriction of parking passes and the ability to attend dances after students accumulated 15 unexcused absences. However, there were other changes, most notably the decision to count every third tardy as an absence. When administration announced these new policies, student opinion differed greatly as to whether these changes were truly needed. 

“I think that the main problem stems from the tardy thing, because you only get, what, three tardies for an absence? And enough absences gets your parking pass revoked,” said Senior Class Vice President Carter Motten. “Now I myself have been late to school several times this year already, and I've been tardy to classes as well.”

Of course, a system like this wouldn’t be in place if teachers and administrators didn’t feel there was a problem that needed to be addressed. After the high number of absences last year, many felt it would be best to get ahead of tardies now, before the problem becomes more significant.

“Even though it’s a punishment, I think it’s a good incentive to get kids in school, because the average student last year had 20 or so absences,” said English teacher Kourtney Rabinowitz. “That’s a lot of school to miss, especially considering that we have so many snow days and virtual days. And we know that virtual days just aren’t as effective. If you miss a bunch of other things, you will certainly feel the pain of that as a student.”

There was some confusion between faculty and students at the start of this year, as administration unintentionally shared two different documents at first, leading some teachers to give their students false information. One notable change announced was that every third tardy would count as an absence and might result in loss of class credit.

“We’re still keeping that, but that’s internal housekeeping stuff, like when we talk to students about losing their parking passes, or not being able to buy dance tickets,” said Principal Scott Strickler. “It’s just a metric. It’s not going to be reflected in Infinite Campus. It is literally just a metric for the admin to keep track of those things.”

Despite the nuanced layers to the tracking of tardies and absences, at least some students feel the punishments themselves are the wrong way of going about things. With ISS (In school suspension) assigned for every tardy above 15, some students can rapidly accumulate days of ISS.

“I think that when you try to restrict something like this so much, then you end up creating more problems. Because putting these kids in ISS or lunch detention or whatever will not make them think they should be in school more or that they shouldn’t be late,” said Motten. “It’ll just make them think that they’re one of the bad kids, and that’s going to desensitize them to actually doing bad things.”

Of course, on the ground tardies are enforced differently from one teacher to another. Some rarely ever report tardies or absences, while others will mark tardies for students who are only barely late. This has led some to think the school needs a more strictly enforced definition of what a tardy even is, and to hold teachers to it.

“I think it should be a school-wide policy. Certainly, I have my exceptions. I have my bathroom policy. If you come in and put your stuff down, tell me you’re going to the bathroom and I won’t count you tardy,” said Rabinowitz. “And I think we should be allowed to have that kind of freedom. But at the same time, you don’t necessarily know how it changes day to day. We might need to start exactly on time with no bathroom passes one day. It’s hard to enforce with the idiosyncrasies of the public school system.”

Of course, while many administrators are concerned with false-negatives, where a student is reported present and they are not, for students the much greater concern is false-positives, where they are reported absent while present. 

“There’s this teacher, who I know often doesn’t or never collects her Flex attendance, and that leads a lot of students to have absences when they really shouldn’t,” said Motten. “Also, in my opinion, if you don’t have a second or first block, there’s no reason for you to come to Flex unless you’re actually priority requested. I think that a better policy would be if you have 10 or so absences, you can go to appeals and discuss what an appropriate punishment would be.”

Students might wonder where this new attendance policy comes from, with some assuming it has some origin in Student Council policy since some of the consequences are tied to Student Council events.

“Student Council really just tries to support what admin puts out and the decisions they make. We just try to give a student voice. So when they bring us with their final decision they’re making, they obviously ask us for our opinions,” said Student Body President Keatyn Weast. “I feel we do have good influence. We meet with admin every few weeks, and we usually bring the topics to the table. I feel just us being able to bring stuff to admin to get their perspective is valuable influence.”