Since January, a simple change of the rules is keeping students in class, avoiding wasted time and keeping hallways clear of wandering students.

After years of tardy students being sent away from classrooms to seek a pass before entering, now they simply enter the class late and the teacher counts them tardy on their attendance. Administrators said that habitually tardy students were taking advantage of the previous policy, which enabled students to avoid going to class with the excuse that they needed to get a tardy pass.

With the previous policy students would sometimes miss up to 30 minutes of class to get a tardy pass.
I personally had to experience taking 30 minutes to get to class. When getting off the bus after the first bell rang, administrators were guiding everyone to get tardy passes. When I got to the room to get my tardy pass, there was a line that wrapped around the corner and down the hallway. After waiting in line for 10 minutes all students were instructed to just go to class without a pass and they would make he will make an announcement for us to be exempted. The fiasco caused me to miss 10 minutes of U.S History class just because the bus was late.

One way this new policy benefits students is that they will be in class longer than before. The previous policy made students miss too much class time, especially in cases where the student has no control of when they make it to class because of late buses and other legitimate reasons.
Many of students had to deal with this problem when the bus they’re riding shows up to the school late and they do not have time for breakfast.

The policy also benefits teachers who do not like locking students out of the classroom and making them go and get tardy passes and having them missing out on the beginning of a lesson. Since this new policy was issued students have been getting to class earlier than before and have not been missing out on instructional time.

Assistant Principal Robert Deckard said he runs a report at the end of each week to find students with three or more tardies, who are then assigned Saturday school to make up for it.

“We had 100 students with three or more tardies, that is less than 4 percent of the school population,” he said. “What that means is that 2,568 students can get to class on time to their classes.”

It’s not that surprising that many students are tardy at this point when the policy is new. Students will start thinking twice about being tardy when they get assigned Saturday school on a regular basis.

Overall this new policy is helping the school run better. It is helping students get to class on time. It’s helping administrators keep the hall clear from wandering students.