ROHS assistant principals have updated the tardy policy, making it stricter on students who are consistently late to first hour. This change came after ROHS administrative staff noted that over 200 students came in late for first hour in the month of September.
“Since COVID, we’ve been very lax on 1st hour tardies. But now it’s getting to the point where it’s ridiculous. If you stand at the front window at 8:00, there’s a line of kids.” said assistant principal Caroline Krynak. In the past few years, the policy has been that for every 3 tardies, a lunch detention would be given, with first hour tardies not counting towards that. With the new enforcement including first hour, students are now given lunch detentions for every 5 tardies. This poses a problem for students who are more likely to be late to school. Many have to navigate through poor road conditions, construction, and traffic. For others, they have to drive siblings to school, or don’t have a driver’s license to drive themselves.
“When I’m at my dad’s house, I live an hour away. There are a lot of days where I’m late because of accidents on the highway. I can’t control that.” said junior Lucy Van Harents.
If you frequently experience a situation like this and are given lunch detention, contact the assistant principal assigned to your last name. They offer excusals to students with extenuating circumstances and can fix potential errors in the attendance system if you have been wrongly marked tardy. The change to the tardy policy has also encouraged teachers to mark more students tardy. In past school years, teachers were less likely to mark tardies to avoid doing the paperwork involved with giving students lunch detention. Now that administration is handling the paperwork behind the scenes, all the teachers have to do is mark the student as tardy when doing attendance.
“This takes a huge load off for teachers. We feel like we can mark tardies now that we’re not the ones doing the paperwork.” said teacher Lindsay Cole. With this new policy in effect, both teachers and administration are hopeful that more students will get to class on time.
