[From The Desk Of Maria Ward, Principal]
North High School will be implementing new procedures to address chronic problems with students being tardy to class. Beginning on Monday, January 25th, teachers are being asked to close their doors promptly at 8:00 am. Students who are not in class at that time will be directed to a specific place on each floor to receive a pass to class from a dean. Student tardiness will be documented by the dean and appropriate consequences will be issued if necessary. There will be no change to the tardy policy itself, only in its enforcement.
Students who are not in class by 8:00 am will be directed to a specific place on each floor to receive a pass to class from a dean.
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Our family received this email tonight via District 99′s enews. The 99 School Board Member I contacted had no knowledge of this new approach to enforcement. My two high school students tell me that they were notified last week at school of this new….approach? enforcement? cattle round-up? ..and that student reaction is, unsurprisingly, less than enthusiastic. I wonder why North Administrators didn’t address the problem before such draconian measures were implemented?
Lucy,
I hope your not defending tardiness! These kids need to get to class before the bell rings. PERIOD! It’s no wonder kids now a days have no respect for adults. The adults dont enforce the laws, they are too busy trying to be everyones friend! It used to take a village to raise children…
Chad,
Really “kids now a days have no respect for adults.” You must be at least twice my age with that one… seriously though…
As a person who spends a lot more time around teenagers than most, I find our teenagers in town to be respectful, mature and good citizens. I am more often impressed by the families in our community and what they demand from their children than I am dissappointed.
Megan
Either way they need to go to class ontime…
Can you explain why this is draconian?
Elementary students have to report through the office when they are late, and tardies are recorded for them; with the exception of bus riders who can’t control when a bus delivers them to school, high school students are in greater control of when they arrive at school than the little ones.
If there are so many tardy students that a station must be set up on each floor to handle them, it sounds like a new method of enforcement was necessary.
And why are we concerned about the “enthusiasm” of their response, exactly?
Sue, if you’ve read the blog, you’ll notice that I’m careful to separate the facts from my opinion about same. I don’t usually rehash my opinion- everyone has one, after all- but since this seems to have brought forth a great deal of comment here and on other venues, I think this time might be an exception.
As for draconian…..perhaps I should have used the word ‘ridiculous’. I agree that students should be in their rooms when the bell rings. My children follow the school attendance (and tardy) policies and I’m careful to make sure they’re there on time. But….sometimes, a student is late, for whatever reason. The school policy provides for such, as there is no punishment for the first two tardies a student has to first period. See here for the tardy policy in the 2009-2010 Student Handbook (pg 48).
So where in the world did locking them out and herding them to the “t’s” of the corridors to take down names come from?
If there has been a problem with tardiness, I believe that steps should have been taken before something like this occurred. In fact, both principals recently gave presentations to the school board and touted increased attendance rates but said nary a word about tardiness. What happened, and how did things go downhill so quickly?
Let me put it another way: Should the tardiness of any one student on any one given day be held up for example to the rest of the student body? Because, in my opinion, that’s exactly what the administration did on Monday. The student who was tardy for the first time was treated the same as the student who is habitually tardy. For the student who’s always late, the herding along to the corridor t’s isn’t going to make a difference– but for the student who was late that one time, it’s a steep punishment and humiliation for being a few minutes late to first period.
Again, I am not arguing the tardy policy. School begins at 8am; students should be in their classrooms at 8am. Period. I do disagree, strongly, with the method North’s Administration chose to try to curb this apparently recent bloom of student tardiness. I also know that embarrassing and humiliating a child is not a way to win his trust– and you need students to trust you, if you’re going to succeed as a school administration.
I don’t have teenagers, I only have littler ones. Maybe when they reach high school, I will understand why having to get a tardy slip is so emotionally devastating. I will have to take you at your word.
At the risk of being sent to the virtual old folk’s home with Chad, I must say in my days at DGS more than 20 years ago, the doors were locked when the bell rang — not just at start of day, but between classes, too. Hall monitors were present on each floor, and if you were caught in the halls without a pass, you were sent to the office. No exceptions. I never was in that situation, but if I was I doubt my parents would have given a rat’s patootie if I was embarrassed.
The kids should be wrangled up and sent down to a dean’s office. Being tardy is not cool. My comment about how kids these days have no respect for anything is because you see kids, good kids, no caring if they get to class on time. I got my butt kicked if I got was ever late to class. I do not accept this as ok. Parents these days want to be friends with their kids…I don’t, my job is to be a parent. That is what is wrong with our society today. Too many choices. There are two choices my kids learn. Right and Wrong…No excuses.