FEATURE
Tardiness is Not the Best Policy
TARDY POLICY: The Administration creates a brand new tardy policy in an attempt to reduce tardiness rates.
By Stefanie Tyo | Copy Editor
January 18, 2018
Hurry up! Don’t expect to see an open door from your first period teacher anymore because the VNHS administration is cracking down on late students with its brand new tardy policy.
VNHS is demanding better performance from both its students and teachers by moving the instruction starting time from 8:00 a.m. to 7:50 a.m, but tardiness continues to be a problem among students.
The implementation of a new tardy policy has been pending from the start of the school year after the problem was brought up during the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) 2016 review.
“When we had the WASC visit, they reviewed our school program and our strengths and weaknesses, and we did receive the six year predation we were hoping for, but one of the areas that we missed was the tardiness issue and they brought up that we have a tardy problem,” said Ms. Judith Bakenhus, Assistant Principal of VNHS.
The faculty has been brainstorming new rules and regulations to fix the problem. The final tardy policy is expected to start this semester on January 22nd.
“The policy is set up by the HERO program,” Ms. Bakenhus said, “It’s a web based program that tracks all the tardies an individual has. For example, we could pull up any students profile and it will show us the number of tardies that they have and whether they’ve fulfilled or haven’t fulfilled their consequences based on that number.”
The program has a one year lifetime before the school membership expires. During the one year period, the district will be monitoring the numbers of tardies recorded to see if the new policy significantly decreases the level of tardiness in schools.
“The tardies affect the instructional program in a lot of respects students are certainly losing out on instruction and teachers make modifications to their instruction to accommodate these students, such as starting class later to let tardy individuals show up so class can begin, this is an issue we want to end through this policy.”
-Judith Bakenhus
The current tentative draft of the policy states the following consequences:
- With one to three tardies, the student is issued a warning and a phone call home.
- Three tradies results in campus “beautification” at lunch.
- Four tardies require the student to attend the school tardy circle to discuss behavior and how they should change their behavior for academic success.
4. Five tardies follow up with a parent conference with PSA and the student’s counselor.
5. Six tardies issue detention after school for one hour as to reflect on behavior.
6. Seven tardies require students to spend a Saturday campus beautification day.
7. Eight tardies follow with a student-parent contract that acknowledges the individual’s tardiness and the loss of certain privileges if it continues.
8. Nine and beyond leads to a loss of school activity privileges.
“The tardies affect the instructional program in a lot of respects. Students are certainly losing out on instruction and teachers make modifications to their instruction to accommodate these students, such as starting class later to let tardy individuals show up so class can begin, this is an issue we want to end through this policy,” said Ms. Bakenhus.
Though a quick and major change, the new tardy policy is a change that administrators are looking forward to in hopes of making a positive impact on students and chronic tardiness.
Stefanie Tyo is a Junior and the Chief Copy Editor of the Journalism Staff. She has been in journalism for three consecutive years starting her freshman year.
Outside of Journalism Stefanie plays club soccer and volunteers at Tarzana Hospital . Besides writing feature stories for The Mirror publication she also enjoys writing poetry and other forms of creative writing. She plans on majoring in Journalism in college and hopes on becoming a Medical Journalist.
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