Why They Won’t Work

By Kyra Klay

Everyone knows that teenagers aren’t necessarily the best with time management and that is a given. We are late to sports, school, curfew, extracurricular activities and just about anything you can think of. As a teenager myself, I can personally tell you that I got 15 tardies in first period last semester which is not something that I am proud of. Many studies have shown a relationship between teenagers in not only time management, but also wake up times and being late.

As we are at the start of second semester in the 2019 school year, the school has decided to change the tardy and absence policy. They have stated that if a student is more than 15 minutes late to a class they will automatically be counted absent, along with eliminating tardy passes.

There has always been the same policy, when you are late you go to the attendance window for a tardy pass no matter how late you are. After five tardy passes you are issued detention or Saturday school. There was no reason to change the policy because no matter what, the student still had a punishment. Changing to this new policy will not only result in more tardies, but more absences which is what is trying to be avoided in the first place.

As a student and a teenager with time management issues, if I realize that I am going to be more than 15 minutes late now there would not be a reason to show up to class because it would only result in an absence, so there is no point. If the school stuck with the old policy, students would know they still need to show up no matter how late because they will still be counted present, just tardy instead of absent all together.

All students struggle with time management and arriving to things on time, yes some worse than others, but it does affect all teenage high school students as a whole. Changing these new policies will not just result in the opposite of the goal, but also make students less motivated to get to school as fast as possible if they’re running late.