With an ongoing tardiness issue, Pentucket High School has decided to start putting pressure on those who come in late. In my opinion, the new principal, Brenda Erdhart, has started to hand out late slips like Oprah Winfrey hands out cars, not to make people smile with a new car, but rather to encourage students to come in on time. 

This past school year there has been a record number of late students which begs for some sort of reconstruction. Administrative policies like Ms. Erhardt’s are working to fix this issue.

The new rule states: “Everyone who arrives at school late will be noted. After being noted as late five times, you will receive a detention. Any subsequent offenses will result in detention.”

This begs the question: Is there a way to educate children on the concept of punctuality without punishing them for tardiness?

Now, by no means should a student willingly choose to come in late and not expect a punishment of some sort. Punctuality is a necessity, and is vital to students’ foundations in their post-high school career. When these students who are renowned for their consistent tardiness enter the workforce, a rude awakening will await them. At Market Basket, as with many companies, there is a grace period of 5 minutes after the time you were scheduled to come in.

Among the many people I have spoken to, there is an astounding number of negative comments regarding the punishments for this new rule. One anonymous junior said, “It is a disgrace to be punishing people who have otherwise done nothing wrong.”

On the other hand, when speaking about this issue with my own parents, they weighed in by saying that “school is a job and you can’t show up late to a job. Also, it teaches you kids how to get here on time.”

Although tardiness is an issue across the board at our school I believe that there needs to be some balance between handing out numerous detentions to students that have otherwise done no wrong.

Not only is it an issue for our students to be tardy to school, absenteeism is as well. According to the Department of Education, 14% of our district’s students have missed fifteen or more school days.

If the United States Federal Government is noticing that seven out of every fifty of our students are absent from school for more than fifteen days, is tardiness really the issue we should be facing?