For more than one student from TCS, being late to class several times a week, and even more than once a day is familiar, and something they’ve learned to ace. The school has tried different mechanisms to hopefully force students to dread being late to class; the most common includes having to perforcely attend detention in lunch and sometimes even after school. Even though, the school has had the same “consequences” each year, this fall they added some unnecessary adjustments that as expected did not have any positive impacts and created a new set of problems for the school’s staff.

Roger Arbabi, the high school principal, is responsible for the adjustment made on the school; after realizing the low arrival on time average the students had. This year, he added this new system that includes lunch and even after school detention with parents notice. “The system is not perfect yet, but we feel that is a much bigger improvement over what was happening last year,” Arbabi said. “We are following the US curriculum, we want to make sure that we instill that punctuality is important.”

The teenagers, young adults and even Staff from TCS had a drastic change regarding the Tardy Policy that in a way was going to assure everyone that the students days of roaming the halls late were over. When the school’s directives notice the amount of students who took the tardies for granted they decided to effectuate a system that was going to improve the problem and in a way change the students’ routine. A secretary from the high school office verifies every morning who had tardies the previous day and print a sheet with the names that the school’s community can see hanging in the billboard. “Every day the report is taken from the beginning of the second bimester to date and a count is taken of how many tardies each one carries; for every additional tardy they have not paid, they add up to 10 minutes,” said Maria Ramirez, one of the high school’s secretaries and person in charge of the new tardy policy; apart from her many other tasks as a secretary. “I have to put it on the billboard and give each student a notification.”

That said, it’s no secret that the new implementation is not just a laborious task, but somehow it’s common as past years and other school. I find it fascinating that the school has had more than one ecologic campaign where the use of regular paper and the purchase of plastic bottles in the cafeterias are prohibited; but the school lets Ramirez print paper for not only the high school entrance billboard, but also for the slips, which she is required to hand out to every student on second and third block. “It seems horrible to me that the school always has its ecology campaign and to not waste paper but come up with this,” Said Camila Sanchéz, a junior from TCS. “I find it awful that the secretaries have to go all over high school handing out the papers to everyone.”

We can see how this new system implemented in the school is one that has been used for many years not only here but in other US schools. The school should change this new system that its not only affecting the paper used but also the staff involved; it would be best if they find a new alternative or be more considerate with the tardies; it should take the students more into account and know when the students are right and it was not their fault to have arrived late to class. As a matter of fact, teachers should have more empathy with the first block of the day, and the two blocks after window and lunch which are the ones students commonly arrive late to class. Even though the new tardy policy is new, there may be some agreements that students and teachers resolve so that tardies are no longer a problem.