Staff editorial: New attendance policies do not solve problems

Arriving just moments after the bell has rang, the chronically late student is almost always marked tardy and forced to endure the consequences that come as a result.

Tougher attendance policies this year are intended to ensure that nobody will get away with over double-digit cuts and tardies, as multiple students said they did in the past. To do this, the administration has upped the consequence for excessive tardies from one lunch detention to two one-hour detentions after school. This new punishment applies to students who have been tardy six or more times in all of their classes combined or have three cuts.

The strictness of these new policies may seem like a positive change at first, but in reality, the tougher enforcement simply blurs the line between tardies and cuts and does not give students much of an incentive to avoid cuts once they are late to class.

To punish a student who is 10 minutes late to six classes and misses a total of 60 minutes the same as someone who cuts three block periods (missing roughly 270 minutes) seems unjust at best.

The results of a recent Falcon poll show that these new policies are affecting many students. In a poll of 85 students conducted by the Falcon, 27 answered that they had received detentions as a result of tardies.

These after-school detentions are often inconvenient for students who are involved in numerous activities, many of which may in fact be academic.

Of course, it can be argued that it is students’ fault for not caring enough about their education to wake up a few minutes earlier to be on time for class. However, detention may be even more detrimental to the education of a student who is forced to stay at school for an extra hour, when they could be working with a tutor or attending a college counseling meeting.

For students who don’t have seventh periods, detentions on Tuesdays and Thursdays are even more inconvenient. They have to wait at school after third period until detention actually starts at 3:20. In effect, the attendance policy ends up taking away even more time than the intended two hours of detention for many students.

Clearly, the school has to encourage students to go to class on time. But it is in administration’s best interest to make policies that motivate students to get to class on time, or at the very least go to class even if they are late.

This can be accomplished by giving shorter detentions to students who are late to class and increasing the consequences for cuts.

Additionally, the number of tardies necessary to receive a detention should increase, so it is not as close to the number of cuts necessary to receive a detention. A fairer number would be nine tardies before detention kicks in.

The administration may think its new policies will reduce cuts and tardies, but in fact, more students, once they are already running late, may make the choice not to come to a class at all if they perceive the punishments as being equal.