Increased Student Tardies Takes Time Away From Class Periods
Late students create disruptions in the classroom, which leads to less time for learning.
By Jisela Negrete
Late students create disruptions in the classroom, which leads to less time for learning.
By Jisela Negrete
In the 2021-22 school year, the start time for Pioneer High School changed from 8:05 to 8:30 a.m., with a seven-minute passing period, but even with that extra time tardies are still common.
Approximately 90 students are tardy a day, and the height of this issue is found during first period. Students are held accountable for the unexcused tardy by having to attend lunch detention. If the student fails to attend five lunch detentions, they will be required to go to Saturday school.
There could be a number of reasons why a student is running late to school like waking up late, traffic or if their ride to school is running late.
“What causes me to be late is going to sleep late due to having to go soccer practice and getting home which makes me have to do homework and go to sleep late,” said Esli Garcia, 10.
Being late to class disrupts the whole period, causing all students to get off track on school work. Math teacher JennieRae Paker experiences this whenever her students are late since at the start of every period she collects phones in boxes.
“Everyone's like ‘Oh who is it?’ ‘What's happening?’ ‘Who's coming in?’ and (the tardy student) disrupts (the classroom) because the other students get distracted,” said Paker.
Senior Ruan Testolin believes that students who arrive late to class frequently risk missing important information and specifics of the day's curriculum.
“Students who occasionally arrive late may not miss much class, whereas those consistently tardy might struggle to keep up with the material,” said Testolin.
English teacher Alan Tracey feels that when students are tardy they are missing some of the most important minutes of the class period.
“The worst 10 minutes to miss is the first 10 minutes of the class. It's where you set up everything, it's where the assignments get discussed, it's where the priorities are discussed, it's where the agenda gets discussed,” said Tracey.
English teacher Michelle Bowman’s zero and first period are both AP English literature classes and do not experience many tardies, however students in her third and fourth period come to class late. Bowman sends her late students to get a tardy slip and has to check the timestamp when they get back to see if it was an old pass.
“I don't want to blame completely regular classes because you know AP students, a lot of them are in leadership so they have to go,” said Bowman. “This is my philosophy, as long as the student is responsible and can keep caught up and send me an email, I'm fine. But the students that kind of just slink in, or kind of all of a sudden they are behind and they haven't done anything, that drives me crazy.”
While students get lunch detention or Saturday school for tardies, Paker feels there aren't any incentives to get students to attend those consequences.
“You know, one of the things when we had more dances, the idea was if you had to go to Saturday school and you didn't serve your Saturday school, you couldn't go to a dance or an activity. But now we only have two dances. So there's really nothing we can take away,” said Paker.
Office assistant Corie Potter hopes that as the year goes on, less students will be late to class, meaning there would be less tardies to give out to students.
“My goal someday is to cut the average number of tardies down to more than half of what it is now. With the great team in the attendance office guided by our great leader (Assistant Principal Tim) Gavello, I am sure we can accomplish this goal very soon, hopefully,” said Potter.
Approximately 90 students are tardy a day, and the height of this issue is found during first period. Students are held accountable for the unexcused tardy by having to attend lunch detention. If the student fails to attend five lunch detentions, they will be required to go to Saturday school.
There could be a number of reasons why a student is running late to school like waking up late, traffic or if their ride to school is running late.
“What causes me to be late is going to sleep late due to having to go soccer practice and getting home which makes me have to do homework and go to sleep late,” said Esli Garcia, 10.
Being late to class disrupts the whole period, causing all students to get off track on school work. Math teacher JennieRae Paker experiences this whenever her students are late since at the start of every period she collects phones in boxes.
“Everyone's like ‘Oh who is it?’ ‘What's happening?’ ‘Who's coming in?’ and (the tardy student) disrupts (the classroom) because the other students get distracted,” said Paker.
Senior Ruan Testolin believes that students who arrive late to class frequently risk missing important information and specifics of the day's curriculum.
“Students who occasionally arrive late may not miss much class, whereas those consistently tardy might struggle to keep up with the material,” said Testolin.
English teacher Alan Tracey feels that when students are tardy they are missing some of the most important minutes of the class period.
“The worst 10 minutes to miss is the first 10 minutes of the class. It's where you set up everything, it's where the assignments get discussed, it's where the priorities are discussed, it's where the agenda gets discussed,” said Tracey.
English teacher Michelle Bowman’s zero and first period are both AP English literature classes and do not experience many tardies, however students in her third and fourth period come to class late. Bowman sends her late students to get a tardy slip and has to check the timestamp when they get back to see if it was an old pass.
“I don't want to blame completely regular classes because you know AP students, a lot of them are in leadership so they have to go,” said Bowman. “This is my philosophy, as long as the student is responsible and can keep caught up and send me an email, I'm fine. But the students that kind of just slink in, or kind of all of a sudden they are behind and they haven't done anything, that drives me crazy.”
While students get lunch detention or Saturday school for tardies, Paker feels there aren't any incentives to get students to attend those consequences.
“You know, one of the things when we had more dances, the idea was if you had to go to Saturday school and you didn't serve your Saturday school, you couldn't go to a dance or an activity. But now we only have two dances. So there's really nothing we can take away,” said Paker.
Office assistant Corie Potter hopes that as the year goes on, less students will be late to class, meaning there would be less tardies to give out to students.
“My goal someday is to cut the average number of tardies down to more than half of what it is now. With the great team in the attendance office guided by our great leader (Assistant Principal Tim) Gavello, I am sure we can accomplish this goal very soon, hopefully,” said Potter.