Almost every school has a set of rules and policies, such as tardies. One of Regina’s current and most confusing topics has been this year’s tardy policy. A tardy policy is a set of rules and procedures that handle what to do when a student is tardy to school or class. The tardy policy has undergone change multiple times over the course of just a few years. It initially began to change after the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
During the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the tardy policy became much more lenient. As schools remained closed from March through June 2020, students and staff spent school days online through Google Meet or Zoom. As the pandemic lessened its grip on society, students began to feel more comfortable attending school again. Regina was one of the few high schools who opened their doors to in person learning in August of 2020.
Before the pandemic, tardies resulted in a detention that was held three times a week after school. A faculty member signed up for one day to supervise the fifty minute detention. Students were not allowed to complete homework or go on any electronic device. Nor were they allowed to close their eyes and sleep.
As recently as two years ago, soon after the pandemic, there was not a detention policy at Regina at all. However, contrary to popular belief, the reinstitution of the detentions was at the request of the teachers, not the administration. Teachers found that students coming into class late was disruptive, and had asked administration to bring back detentions.
When creating the new detention system for this year, the administration looked at other policies of local high schools: New Trier Township High School, Evanston Township High School, Loyola Academy, DePaul College Prep and Notre Dame College Prep. While each high school was different, they all followed the same general pattern. Every school, with the exception of Evanston, had between two to three warning tardies, based on class, quarter and semester. Loyola and DePaul’s policy is to give every student three warning tardies for each class they are in. New Trier chose to give two warning tardies for each quarter, while Notre Dame chose to give three warning tardies per semester.
Each school did not distinguish between an excused or unexcused tardy, with the exception of DePaul, in which the school determined whether a tardy was excused or not.
According to the 23-25 RD Student Handbooks, reasons students can receive detentions are for the following four reasons: students being in an unassigned area and/or no hall pass, inappropriate or unauthorized use of technology, dress code, and tardiness to school or class.
The tardy detention policy for the 2023-2024 school year stated that students would receive two warning tardies, however it was unclear if the tardies were regarding one quarter, one semester, or the entire year. Typically, detentions were for less serious offenses, such as tardies, and lasted 20 minutes. Lunch detentions were instituted as an immediate consequence of being tardy. This policy is still in effect for the 2024-2025 school year.
The main issue with last years’ policy, Regina’s Assistant Principal Mrs. Allworth said, was that parents could call into the school and excuse a tardy student. While many dismissed tardies were for valid reasons, even more were for invalid reasons, such as getting drinks from Starbucks or Dunkin’ Donuts. This abuse of the past tardy system gave way for the newer, less lenient policy.
While many students believe that tardies are deemed excused or unexcused based on the whims of the attendance team, this is untrue. There is a set framework that helps the attendance team to determine whether a tardy is excused or not, with safety being their number one priority. In the event of extreme weather conditions, road closures and accidents, all tardies are deemed excused.
The general framework regarding the new tardy policy labeling excused or unexcused tardies has caused some confusion among students.
Sophomore Frances Galutan said, “I say the new tardy policy is unfair. While it’s important for the validity of the excuse of tardiness to be evaluated, it gets out of hand and (becomes) unreasonable when something out of your control is considered unexcused.”
Many students are unclear about what makes a tardy unexcused or excused. While some may think that an excused tardy means they won’t have to serve detention, this is untrue. According to the 24-25 RD Student Handbook, “Excessive (eight or more) excused or unexcused tardies from a single class period may result in an attendance contract, a detention session, or restriction from co-curricular activities.”
The biggest difference between an excused and unexcused tardy is in the way they are coded. According to Allworth, the Illinois State Board of Education requires all schools to distinguish between excused and unexcused tardies in their records.
When asked why students with excused tardies are still given lunch detentions when detentions are used as a punishment for tardiness, Allworth said, “Because they are given two times in the entire semester, well now quarter, to not get a detention for being late”
So, for students’ purposes, there is no difference between an excused and unexcused tardy. While this information may be shocking to some students, it isn’t nearly as surprising as the update to the policy that tardies are no longer being reset at the semester, but at the quarter. While this change has made the policy more lenient, it should not encourage students to be late. This new policy, may not necessarily change much about the amount of tardies given, as over 75% of respondents – including students, teachers and staff – in a recent survey find missing valuable class time to be as sufficient of a punishment as detentions.
Despite over 50% of respondents disliking the new tardy policy, the data speaks for itself. The new policy has been found to be much more effective than the older ones over the past three years. In the 2022-2023 school year, there were over 400 excused and unexcused tardies in quarter one. After detentions were reinstituted in the 2023-2024 school year, the number of tardies drastically decreased to 117 tardies. This information, however, does not include all the tardies that were excused by parents. The current tardy policy has continued to drop to 45 excused and unexcused tardies in quarter one, after the two “freebies” per quarter.
From the data, the new policy appears to be effective. Even though many respondents dislike the new policy, Allworth has said that the administrative team will continue to revise the policy, and work to take students’ comments into account.