With a total of 19,688 tardies in the 2022-23 school year itself, Coppell High School has enforced a new tardy policy to minimize lateness amongst students.
The new policy began on Aug. 21, two weeks after the start of the semester to allow students time to adjust to issues such as late buses, navigating the building and the crowded hallways.
The policy entails consequences that heighten as the number of offenses increase. A student’s first two tardies are let go with a written and verbal warning. More than two tardies can lead to teachers writing students up to the assistant principal, resulting in detention, Saturday School or in-school suspension.
Tardies pertain within each class they occur in, so students can experience multiple consequences if different teachers report them for their number of tardies. A student’s tardy count goes back to zero at the beginning of each marking period, providing them a clean slate.
In the 2022-23 school year, CHS had no official consequence for tardies. However, after experiencing a spike in tardies during the last school year, CHS administrators felt it was necessary for change in not only the number of tardies, but also in the discipline of students.
“Last year, we just sat here and watched so many kids take advantage of not being in school on time and coming in late to classes in droves,” CHS Principal Laura Springer said. “One of our big jobs as administrators and teachers is to prepare you for the future.”
The main emphasis of the tardy policy is to ensure that students understand the importance of punctuality as they progress in their adulthood and step into roles of professionalism.
Assistant principal Colleen Lowery, who constructed the list of consequences, created it with an intensifying order in order to highlight the significance of promptness.
“I wanted the students to understand and experience that there will be consequences for their actions,” Lowery said. “Escalating the consequences of tardies allows students to understand that they can’t continuously show up late when they are expected to be on time.”
Excessive tardiness also leads to students missing essential learning and recreational time. CHS AP Biology teacher Dr. Bianca Benitez has dealt with students being tardy as her class is in E205 which is upstairs in the far-back corner of the school.
“I understand that a student can be tardy for several reasons, but I am sad as a teacher when it becomes a habitual process and they start missing class time,” Dr. Benitez said.
To overcome obstacles such as distance and crowdedness, students are encouraged to take advantage of different shortcuts in the school to get to class more efficiently and avoid tardiness.
CHS junior Anushka Joshi thinks that the tardy policy pushes her to be more aware of passing periods and pushes her to use her alternate routes to class..
“Sometimes I’m worried that 10 minutes isn’t enough for me to get from one side of the building to another, but using the back hallways makes things so much easier,” Joshi said. “The policy kind of encourages me to be aware of how much I talk to my friends during passing periods, so I’m not late to class.”
Under the new tardy policy, students in clubs or organizations can be revoked of their status and leadership role in a club and can also get privileges taken away like off-campus lunch taken away if tardies become a problem for them.
“I can’t let you go off campus, because there is no way you’re going to come back on time if you can’t even get to school on time,” Springer said. “If you have too many tardies, I will ask club organizers to not let you be a leader, because leaders are the ones who should set the standards for everybody else.”
Students in athletics who have to go to class from outside facilities such as the tennis center, Buddy Echols Field and swimmers from the YMCA, are not exempt from the policy even if they are late. This is because the administration has told athletic teachers to not hold students back and to give them time to get ready to get to their next class.
However, the tardy policy does not reprimand students that are late due to school transportation-related circumstances. This includes late buses in mornings and shuttling delays from Coppell High School Ninth Grade Campus and New Tech High School @ Coppell to CHS.
Springer said with the new tardy policy there has been an apparent decrease in tardies.
We still have some of the same people being tardy, but they will soon learn,” Springer said. “There are consequences that come with it, so eventually it will become a discipline issue and not just a tardy issue.”
Follow Sahasra (@sahasrachak24) and @CHSCampusNews on X.
