New policy works to decrease unexcused absences, tardiness

Sarah Elbeshbishi

The A hallway stands empty after the bell rings between classes. The administration hopes to keep them that way.

Starting this semester, Watkins Mill High School’s administration will enforce a policy that will send students home if they are skipping or constantly late to classes. The administration hopes this will help to decrease absences as well as tardies.

While this may sound like a reason to roam the halls during class, it will actually have long-reaching implications for grades and eventually graduation.

“There’s a policy that says if you’re not going to class, we can E3 you, hold your grades…[and] you will not get these grades, [so] you will not get credit because you have not been in class long enough,” principal Carol Goddard said.

Students who come late to class can be a disruption and often miss the most important part of the lesson, causing the teacher to stop and repeat themselves. Repeated tardiness “just says that you don’t want to be here to learn,” Goddard added.

The administration instituted hall sweeps in hopes of fixing this issue, and while they have decreased the tardies and absences, they have not completely fixed the issue at hand. This has been a policy for many years now, but it just has not always been evenly enforced in the past.

“I think attendance is extremely important, as we’ve created a culture…[where] attendance doesn’t matter,” science teacher Pamela Ciliberti said. As well as being sent home, teachers are also allowed to give zeros for incomplete assignments instead of 50 percents when students have an unexcused absent.

These new policies are being implemented to help improve attendance, grades and eligibility, which will then increase participation in extracurricular activities. They are also being added to eliminate skipping and help students develop a habit of being on time.

While this new policy was designed to improve the academic aspects of school for students, it is also being used as a lesson for the future.“I think [attendance] is an important thing because the world operates on a timetable and the need to show up to work on time and to be reliable and dependable,” Ciliberti added.