TO TERMINATE TARDINESS

As the school bell sounds and class begins, there is an element of settling down; most teachers will have their students put phones away and take school supplies out, a careful transition from their lives outside of school to the academic-focused world of tests, worksheets, and projects…. Bang.

The door flings open, and in comes a late classmate, possibly concerned about the distraction they’re causing, or possibly not, but nonetheless popping the quiet bubble of class with their tardy presence.

PRHS staff and attendance records have noticed a significant increase in tardiness since August 19 and now, PRHS’s campus-both staff and students alikemust collaborate to lower these numbers.

Anthony Overton, PRHS principal since 2019, acknowledges the problem: “We’ve definitely seen a rise in tardies from when we left back in COVID,” Overton said. “As we’ve come back this school year, that system that manages tardiness... (has been) a little lacking.”

The system Overton is referring to is our school tardiness policy, which can be found in the Student Handbook; Consequences are doled out based on tardies per period and overall tardies. Most notably, per period punishment starts after the second unexcused tardy with a formal warning/the teacher marked down on the tardy referral formthe first tardy is informal warning- and overall tardies punishment starts after twelve overall tardies with the student/parent notified by letter and autodialer.

Since coming back to school, teachers and staff have been more lax in enforcing this policy, but it’s important to note that 43% of students surveyed felt that tardiness is not disruptive to their learning.

Overton believes this lenient attitude is understandable with the start of school coming from online, then hybrid learning in 2020-early 2021. But he has plans to revive our previous system. “It’s obviously becoming a big issue…” Overton said, “If you actually go back about two years before (school shut down) we had a pretty high tardy rate… Then we implemented this current policy and tardies went way down.”

Still, before that happens, a question remains: What do students and teachers really think of this tardiness epidemic?

77.1% of student responses self-reported as being tardy this school year, and the majority of those students (29.4%) blame traffic. Those numbers, however, don’t account for the 68.4% of students who find themselves late during passing periods and after lunch.

English teacher Kevin Kijewski sees those tardiness the most.

“Interestingly, one would imagine that first period would have the