Tardy Policy

What can be done to help students come to school on time? 

At our school, the number of students that are late to class throughout the day is a problem.  It is greater during the first periods of the day, but it is is a problem throughout the day. 

One of the things that has been tried in the past is sending the students to "tardy sweep," but all that did was keep students out of class, and they would purposely show up late, so they didn't have to go to class. 

Then they realized we would let them in class no matter what time they showed up, so there needed to be something done. Now if they are more than 30 minutes late, they are sent to "tardy sweep," but they are to do work when they arrive. 

Last week at my school, our tardy policy was outlined in a clear delineated process. This is in an attempt to curb the rampant tardiness of many of our students. Some of this habitual tardiness is the students' responsibility and some of it is because of the parents. The new policy has many steps. The tardy policy begins with an overview of the California Ed code and what the basics of tardies are at our school:

"California Education Code 48260 states that any student who is absent from school without a valid excuse more than three days or tardy* for more than three days in one school year is truant.  Truancy also includes being absent from a single period in the school day. *Students arriving to class after the bell signaling the start of the period are deemed tardy. All tardies will be tracked through Aeries. Instructional time is invaluable; therefore, an accumulation of tardies will result in detention and/or Beautification Projects.  Detention is an opportunity to make up time and academic work  that students missed due to truancies and tardies. Beautification projects exist to support student accountability for truancies and tardies."

It then goes on to list the consequences of each tardy:

1. Warning from teacher

2. Phone call home from teacher

3. Phone call home from teacher 

4. Teacher intervention

5. Counselor intervention & home contact (Teacher email counselor)

6. Lunch detention & home contact (Teacher email discipline office)

7. After school detention & home contact (Teacher email discipline office)

8. AP / Dean attendance conference (Teacher email AP & Dean)

In addition to these steps are assignments to beautification projects and pre-planned lockouts: 

Lockout

School will implement random lockouts where all classroom doors will be locked once the class bell rings. All students out of class will be issued after school detention.

Detention

Students will report to detention room turn in their cell phones and complete classwork on the provided computers.

Beautification Project

Students will report to the discipline office on the scheduled day and time to participate in the monthly beautification project.

• Students that fail to serve detention and / or the beautification project will lose the privilege of attending school events and activities until the time is served.

• Accumulation of detentions and / or beautification projects will result in the loss of privileges for one semester.

We have not completed these processes in their entirety yet to see how they work, but some parents have been called by the office, and I have already noticed that some of my students who are usually late have been coming to school on time more often. Some of the parents do not care enough to get their students on time, yet. I will be interested to see how the tardy statistics change as these are implemented for a while. I just know what we did before did not work. It is very difficult to get in touch with many of the parents on our campus, so the teachers will be required to document the attempts made in our attendance system, and we will progress from there. 

A frustrating process, but hopefully we are making progress.