When I heard that Skyline high school was the subject of a protest carried out by between 75 to 100 students, my first thought was good, if you aren't outraged, you aren't paying attention. So what were they protesting, pointless wars for empire, endless political bickering in the nation's capitol, petty bigotry and intolerance at home? No, it was an asinine tardy policy at their school. Still, you have to celebrate what few signs of life you can find coming out of the suburbs.
So, what about a tardy policy could be so annoying as to cause such an uproar? Well, the granite school district thought it was appropriate to impose fines on students who are tardy for class. Three bucks the first time and five dollars for each subsequent tardy. To me, that sounds rather excessive. From my time as a student in Utah high schools and later as a student teacher and substitute teacher, I can tell you that the logistics of getting from point A to point B in an overcrowded Utah school makes being late inevitable at times. Certainly there are some students who are just being jerks, but charging a student with a five dollar fine for what was most likely a potty break in just mean spirited.
But the school district must have thought there was some sort of problem for there to be such a policy in place. According to local news coverage, the school district claimed that there were 25,000 tardies in the year before they implemented these fines and now that there are about 11,000 tardies per year. Well, that sounds like a lot of students being late for class and they have reduced the number by more than 50%, but let's take a closer look at the numbers. According to the numbers I was able to dig up, Skyline high school graduated 415 student in 2010. If we assume all the students graduate (which they don't) and the enrollment numbers at the school stay constant (again, probably not true) that means there are about 1,245 students at the school. To get the lowest number of class periods possible, let's also assume the school is on the block schedule and the students attend four 90 minute classes a day over a 180 day school year. That gives 896,400 total student class periods in the school year. 25,000 tardies per year gives about a 2.7% tardy rate. So, on any give class period, approximately 97.3% of the students will be on time. To put it another way, the average student will be late to class four to five timer per school year. These numbers represent the highest percentage I was able to come up with. If Skyline instead has 2000 student going to 7 classes per day, 25,000 tardies is less that a 1% tardy rate, or 1 to 2 tardies per student per year.
To me this sounds like a solution in search of a problem. I know Utah school districts don't have that much administration, but if this is the kind of stuff they have time to come up with, it's time to trim some fat from the administrative budget. Tough economic times call for hard decisions, time to bounce a spokesperson or two to the curb.
To any Skyline students who happen to stumble onto this blog, it seems that next week is your school district's spring break. That gives you a whole week to network with student at other schools in the Granite district and organize a much wider disruption of classes when school resumes a week from Monday. Bear in mind that stepping out of line in any way, shape or form can subject you to attest, fines and never getting anything higher than a B for the rest of your secondary education. Still, it is your school and your education, may as well stand up to the petty tyranny of sad little men when you have the chance.
To any Granite school district administrators who have managed to read this far, lighten up and ditch the negative policy. You have more important things to worry about, at least, one assumes you do.
