New Tardy Policy Penalizes Students Who Skip Detention

Detention Tardy Policies have changed many times and this year as the TCS High School has modified it once more, causing controversy among students.

Beginning bimester 2, if a student skips lunch detention after having received three tardies, they will be penalized with a double ten minute detention during the next two lunch periods. The rule from the first bimester remains the same; each student receives three free tardies per quarter, and a ten minute lunch detention after that third tardy.  

“Sometimes kids don’t go to the detention when they’re supposed to, so we’re looking at changing the policy a little bit. If a student’s doesn’t show up, then they’ll owe us two detentions,” Roger Arbabi, High School Principal, said.

The policy is very recent as it’s only been functioning for the first 2 weeks of the second bimester, which is why there’s been so much controversy among students. There are students who are not aware of the new rule, others agree with it, and there are some who do not even feel affected by it.

“I wasn’t even sure how many free tardies we had each quarter. I thought if we arrived late once, then we would have detention on the next day. I think it’s unfair that the school gives you double detention for missing it one day; sometimes people miss it because they forget,” Maria Antonia Obando, Eleventh grade student, said.

The goal of the punishment is implementing logical consequences based on students actions, if a student is late to class, then time should be taken off from them. Some students are happy to see the detention policy working and have noted improvements since August.

“I used to have detention before, but I found out the tedious punishment I had to fulfill, wasting my time which I could be using in something more productive. I decided to stop arriving late to my classes, and it has helped a lot,” Martin Velasquez, Eleventh grade student, said.

Beginning this school year, the daily schedules were changed, making the lunch period 1 hour long instead of 40 minutes. Since students now have more free time, detention is not such a big  deal for them.

“I think extra detention depends on the person and how much they value their time. Sometimes I don’t really care if I miss the first ten minutes of lunch.” Camila Sanchez, 11th grade student, said.

A list is posted every morning on the High School bulletin board informing which students have to attend detention that day. The plan for this bimester is to get rid of that list by handing out small pieces of paper every morning reminding students they have detention. Ultimately the goal is for students to know this on their own, without the need for any reminder.

“The other thing that we’re going to try to make different, is we tried to make it so that it was autonomous. So if a student were tardy, they’ll now,” Arbabi said.

Most of the High School students who normally have detention see this method as inefficient and unnecessary.

“I think it’s a horrible idea mainly because it’s a waste of paper. We are all capable of knowing if we have to attend detention, and also people have been throwing the small pieces of paper to the floor which only makes a mess for the maintenance ladies to clean.”  Sanchez said.

High School principals and teachers are hoping these changes in the policy will encourage students to attend detention on the day it’s assigned, and are waiting to see how effective it turns out to be.  

“We feel our new policy has worked, still we are worried about the students who keep missing detention. There is an average of 20 students who have to pay detention each day. Of those 20, approximately 7 or 9 attend detention each day,” Vicky Jaramillo, High School Vice Principal, said.