Unfashionably Late and Unreasonably Punished

It may be hard for people to understand this, but it is very difficult to navigate your way through this huge school with hundreds of students and what feels like miles of hallways and stairwells. Imagine walking up or down four to 11 floors a day while dodging other students on the stairs and pushing your way through the traffic jams that are on every floor’s entrances to the stairwell. It’s not pleasant. And let’s not even get started on how slow the elevators are.

Now imagine that you finally get to your class that you worked so hard to get to because it’s on the other side of the school, only to find that the late bell has rung and did so when you were battling your way through the hallways. So, you knock on the classroom door. Maybe the teacher will be nice this time. But that just depends. In this situation teachers might look at your with pity or with amusement. At the last second you think you’re teacher is going to have a heart and let you in. He should. You did, after all, make the sad puppy eyes. But alas, he motions you away to fend for yourself and try to find one of the only two people in the school who can give late passes.

This is the feeling most students have felt this year with the new late policies. What happed to last year’s logical late policies? If you were late coming from a class all you had to do was get a pass from the teacher you came from. Now students have to waist precious learning time trying to find Ms. Jackson or the assistant principal to get a late pass. It is understood that these rules were put in place to keep students from interrupting the teacher during class time. But aren’t we supposed to worry about the needs of students? Everyday there are at least 50 students on the second floor waiting for a late pass. Because of the amount of students, there is a long wait to get a late pass. By the time the last one gets the late pass, you have missed the crucial part of class, the part where the teacher takes the time to go over what needs to be learned for the assignment. If this inefficient process continues, it won’t mean that students are late to class less. It will mean more students will be farther behind in their classes.

Don’t get the wrong idea. If students are late constantly and without reason then, of course, some disciplinary action should take place. But not every person is late for an irresponsible reason. And why do students get ISS if they’re late only three times? It’s really easy to be late three times! If the teachers were still allowed to write passes then this would not be a problem.

Also, students are usually penalized for being late in the mornings, except the students riding the bus. I understand that students can’t control how late their bus is. But it’s not like students driving or students in carpool can control the traffic. The routes that people take to school have a lot of traffic. Everyone in this area is trying to get to work and trying to get to school or elsewhere. Do you think students or parents can control how fast the traffic is? There are days when people just run a little late, and that is no reason to blame them. I think that when students are late to school, whether it’s by bus or carpool, we should be given late passes at the school entrances. If that’s too much to handle, then why don’t we just have homeroom every morning like regular schools? This way all the students that are late can get in the school and it will mean that fewer students are late to class. It’s time that we made some changes that best help our students succeed in their classes.

The solution is easy: redesign the attendance system to maximize class time, punish only the repeat offenders, and show grace to the occasional frazzled student. A little more grace could go a long way.