New changes to the Poly High School tardy policy announced on November 3 reveals big changes. Students arriving to campus after 8:50 will still be welcomed onto campus and sent directly to class instead of the Solutions Center. Regardless if students arrive with or without a tardy note, teachers will be forced to allow the student to enter.
The tardy policy states the Jackrabbit Lane gate will remain open even after the school bell has rung until third or fourth period. This change has caused a major separation between teachers and staff members if this was a change for the better or the worse.
Dulce Padilla, a 9th grade PARTS student, said, “I think it’s a good idea that they did that. I’ve known people who have been able to improve because of it so they are able to do their work instead of being sent to solutions.”
Shannon Mulvaney, an engineering teacher in the BEACH pathway, was upset over the new changes. When asked, she said, “I feel were going backwards by putting a policy in place which is totally respectable for someone who tries to prepare my students for the real world and college, their needs to be accountability for being on time and there should be consequences if not and changing that 11 to 12 weeks into school is doing our students a disservice.” She said if the new changes had impacted her students’ grades. She said, “It has, I have had kids who were not tardy before now coming in tardy, which unfortunately means that they lose the instruction at the beginning of class, often there’s work that they didn’t complete the class before that is due before the bell and now they are not getting it done and turned it so unfortunately I have a lot more kids that are doing book work versus actual projects and computer work. Yes it has impacted their grades already.” Mulvaney said, “I feel that the district made the change to try to increase students’ attendance without regards to what it would do to students’ grades and behavior and to them it might be necessary. To me as a teacher in the classroom where it’s directly affecting my class, I think it was ridiculous to make a change.”
Danielle Sawyer, a Health teacher as well as the MEDS pathway lead teacher, said, “My thoughts as a teacher are two-fold: it’s hard to get kids to follow rules if there aren’t any, and the new rule is there’s no rules you can come in whenever you want. So with that being said, when you start off a school year with certain rules and remove them, it creates some anarchy. Not a fan. But on the other hand”. Sawyer said she allowed students to enter the classroom after the bell rang even before the policy had been changed. “I always had an open door policy. So this policy didn’t affect me because I always had the same rule before the policy. But I can understand how some students can take advantage of that. I think that is the minority versus the majority.” Sawyer said, most kids would go to class before the policy and the students beforehand who weren’t going to class are taking advantage of the new policy. “Since it has gone into effect I haven’t noticed any changes.” Sawyer said the change to the tardy policy was necessary due to there not being a law that allows for school and teachers to reject students entering a classroom. So parents told the school that they were forced to allow students to enter the classroom no matter how late they are.
According to findlaw.com keeping out a student from class is completely legal as long as the parent or guardian of the student is aware and usually the student is notified from the school or district with some type of message or slip notifying some sort of restriction against entering a class or being kept after class. The California district ED code does not directly speak of this situation so there is no sure answer for the change of the tardy policy according to the California state ED code as of now.
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