As students start to readjust to life at school once again, they may be not be fully aware of the recent county-wide changes to the policies regarding tardiness. Starting this year the punishments for the amount of tardies received have become less strict. Instead of getting OSS for six tardies, but this year students will have to do a two hour work detail after school.
“The changes in tardies came after a task force in our district was looking at some of the inconsistencies at different schools and how tardies were being enforced, addressed and what their consequences were. The focus was really on the disproportionate number of students being suspended at other schools so it was decided that district wide that some more lenient guidelines were set in place,” said Principal Kelly King.
This year Steinbrenner also got rid of their tardy booth. In previous years, if students were tardy, they would have to go to the media center and get a tardy pass. This year teachers are making the tardy passes themselves, so students do not have to take time out of class to get a pass.
The consequences may be different between schools but the amount of violations that a student can reach before disciplinary action is taken has become uniform throughout the district.
“With only being three weeks into the school year, and us not counting the tardies from the first four days of school, we haven’t really had enough data to look at. We will start each week monitoring any trends in tardiness and dress code, then we’ll have conversations with students about it being an issue,” said King.
Usually there’s a small amount of students that receive detentions, ISS, or OSS from excessive tardies at Steinbrenner, but in order to keep these numbers small, students need to stay updated with any future changes so that no one is taken by surprise.
