Everyone’s done it, it’s impossible to avoid, and some even do it every single day: being tardy to a class. At one point during the year, Tahoma High School had about 180 tardies a day; that’s 7.5% of the around 2,400 students enrolled. With this many people in a day, there’s a set procedure in place to handle tardies that are excused and unexcused, but is it a good one?

According to Tahoma High School’s website, “after an absence and prior to returning to class, a student must report to the attendance office to pick up an Admit Slip, which will be either unexcused or parental excused.” In addition, no student may be admitted to a class without an Admit Slip. In theory, this is a solid policy that ensures that every student is accounted for while making sure that the responsibility of marking a student tardy isn’t entirely on a teacher. However, is the policy truly fair to students in addition to functioning correctly?

Eden Atwood, a sophomore at Tahoma High School who has been tardy on two occasions this year, isn’t pleased by the current system. According to Atwood, “the tardy system doesn’t want students to be late but by having them sign a slip just makes kids more tardy.” If she were to make any changes to the policy, she would make it so that students have a set time period given by the teacher in which they aren’t tardy, such as a five minute grace period.

Ryleigh Weston, another sophomore at Tahoma High School agrees, saying that she wishes that “tardies within 5-10 minutes of the bell for the first class don’t need to be excused by a parent.” Weston has been tardy around 20 times this year, and also says that she’s mostly pleased with the tardy system. The one thing she’s dissatisfied with is that fact that “people are more likely to get in trouble for truancy just for being a few minutes late.” It seems like this a concern shared by many students, and one that the

These problems may be solved next year by a new system Mr. Duty, principal at THS, is putting in place a new system. Instead of someone handwriting and inputting a slip into Skyward, the attendance office is hoping to have a mechanical system involving punching ASB cards in. They’ve also listened to students concerns by adding as a five minute grace period at the beginning of each class in which a student doesn’t need to go get a slip.

Mrs. Byoken, who is in charge of keeping track of tardies and sending slips, says that this system is still in the works, but the school administration is hoping to have all the rules set and in place by the beginning of the 2019-20 school year. Who knows, maybe all of the problems students have with the current tardy policy will be fixed next year. Or someone will find something else wrong with the system. One thing is for sure: it’s a work in progress.