There is now a new tardy policy. However, will this new policy be the new pass to skipping classes? Being applied on Tuesday, October 22, 2024, any students who are late will have to report to their nearest hallway or to the main office to receive a Minga tardy pass.
In many students opinions and mine along with some teachers, this will only increase student skipping instead of having the late students show up. In the email sent out, it is said they want to help improve student attendance. They have to know that this will only decrease it.
Also in the email, the most tardies are in the morning, more specifically, the first class of the day. They said they understand, but do they? Do they not understand traffic and how each day is different? Leaving on time, but having to deal with traffic can make said person late. The administrator’s understanding is not an understanding; it’s a telling to simply be better at something we can’t control. Being better at controlling time and how other people affect the time we arrive. The students are held responsible for their tardiness, but when teachers are late to their own classes it is swept under the rug. They even have the same “excuse” we use: that there was traffic, our alarm didn’t go off, we had other priorities, we had to simply be human. It is okay for teachers to be human and have a life besides school but not for the students.
Why go to a class that you would’ve been late by a minute or two, when you have to go to one of the exit doors or the main office then wait in line and walk back to said class? The tardy just went from being a minute late to being ten minutes late. In what way does that help students arrive at class on time or close to on time? This tardy pass makes no sense — why would you make something that is going to cause more tarides? Have they taken thought about the students schedule? Some students have to go from the lower B hallway all the way upstairs to the end of the D hallway. Cutting it close everyday, even walking by yourself, can cause you to have a tardy. I understand trying to make the school better and student attendance better. But they are trying to fix the wrong thing. Instead, of fixing people from being late, why not try to help students who miss the whole class? Fix isn’t the right word for anything in school. The administration should be improving and helping the students — not fix them.
Most teachers seem to be in favor of the policy because it enables the students who are always late to be on time. Do the teachers have more optimism than the students do? Or are they simply delusional while the students are pointing out the reality of the policy?
Tardies are making us more late than we were before. This is a cause and effect situation. The cause being if we are a minute late to a class; the effect is making us ten minutes late to the class.
I wonder how long it will take before this policy is taken down―only to be replaced with another policy to fix us.
