A new tardy system ”on time every time” started on bimester 4 with the help of the directives and teachers  and it has shown a lot of progress.

Throughout the time, the school has been using the detention tardy system but this time, the school changed its policy into a new effective way. William Pulgarin, the MS principal, explains how this tardy system works.

“The secretaries were spending about 8 hours a day calling parents. Then the parents had to find a way to arrange transportation for students. So Secretaries are at an inconvenience, parents are at an inconvenience and then the students went to the detention and we had to find someone takes care of it. Basically, they had a study hall so for them it wasn’t an issue,” Pulgarin said.

The directives wanted to make students be the only party affected with this new tardy tracking system. The automatic system makes the secretaries focus on other issues instead of calling parents. Also, it establishes new consequences that are given by the system.

“What it does is, it gives you a point and every tardy you have, you get a point after a certain amount of points you get a trigger. For 4 tardies you get an email home, 6, you get a second email, 8 a homework assignment. 12, you get a conference with principal and 14 you get a parent-teacher conference with principal,” Pulgarin said.

This punishment makes it more efficient for making students to get to the classes on time, also it has been proved that when the first email is sent, the student stops having tardies. Lots of statistics given by the first weeks of the 4th quarter clearly show how this method is really effective.

“So far through the new tardy tracking system we´ve decreased tardies 26% in 6th grade, 25% and 24% in 8th grade so think about it now we’re not doing de-tension yet we’re still getting a huge benefit of students getting to class on time,” Pulgarin said

This policy clearly shows how it is really effective now that it decreases the percentage of tardies in a huge amount. TCS student Santiago Restrepo gives his opinion of the effectiveness of this new method

“From right now, the statistics I´ve been shown, it has been really successful and the tardies have been reduced in a very significant quantity it is a way to show students they have to get on time every time which is the slogan,” Santiago Restrepo, 9th grade STUCO said.