The Controversy of Pinnacle’s New Tardy Policy
On November 1st, 2021, Pinnacle High School (PHS) implemented a new tardy policy stating that students receive one hour of detention after school on Wednesdays after accumulating their fifth tardy to any class. Since the policy started, classroom conversations arose about the policy’s fairness. Students and staff members hold various opinions on this new school policy.
PHS administration noticed a trend of students marked tardy not only through the gates at the beginning of the day but between classes, too. Thus they needed a solution. Assistant Principal Kimberly Koda believes that students do not care about lunch detentions, so administrators came up with the idea of doing detentions after school instead.
“Students can leave earlier, as any person would for having a job,” Koda said. “Students should be planning their morning to get here with and without traffic, just like you would anywhere.”
In a survey posted by Blueprint Staff through Instagram and Snapchat. respondents self-identified their tardy history. 10% identified as “often late”, 70% as “sometimes late”, and 20% claimed “never late”. Students shared strong feelings against the new policy, with many responses against it emphasizing this concern. In the survey, students stated that traffic and long bathroom lines made students late for classes, and therefore students found any punishment unjust.
“Being one to two minutes late to class results in an hour of mandatory silence after school?” senior Grace Fitzgerald questioned. “If anything, just make people do it for lunch; after school is so inconvenient for so many people.”
“[It’s] unfair, I think. Focusing on the issue of tardiness is focusing on a symptom of student disinterest/lack of access to being punctual. Anything else rather than the causes,” said senior Jacqueline Okeke.
Students suggested alternative solutions to stopping tardies, such as changing traffic patterns in which parents drop off their students in a separate parking lot than where students park, increasing the number of allowable tardies, or simply not giving detention.
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