A fresh START

Students consider it excessive, but Colony High School’s new tardy policy has already proven effective.

The system, called START (Safe Transitions and Reduced Tardies) is already de rigueur at East Anchorage High School and others. Instead of teachers simply marking any latecomers in their attendance, every classroom door closes when the final bell rings. Any students who are caught in the halls afterward are rounded up by hall monitors and ushered into the commons, where they must fill out a short note explaining why they were tardy and how they can avoid that in the future.

After five tardies, students notify their counselors and call their parents. The consequences are compounded with further tardies, starting with detention and eventually, after 25, a three-day in-school suspension.

When first introduced to the policy, most students scoffed and found it ridiculous. Especially for classes downstairs, just walking to the commons and back takes a few minutes, and more class time would be missed due to the procedure than to tardiness itself.

“I came to school 30 minutes late and it took me 10 minutes to fill out the form. I was already counted absent, but they made me go through the process anyways,” says junior Kayla Anderson.

The policy does seem too strict, and virtually no leeway is allowed.

“I was about to walk into the classroom when the bell rang, and the teacher was going to make me go to the commons, but then we realized it was only the warning bell,” recounts junior Brady Dale.

Despite complaints, the system is working. Last Monday, the first day of the system, surprised everyone with only 21 students filling out the new forms in first period, and most of those were due to late arrivals at school rather than loitering in the halls. That number defied expectations, as in other schools that use the program the first week was always the worst.

“I can already see that it works. Nobody wants to be collected,” explains junior Kaleigh Bastien.

If students feel the system is a waste of time, at least they do not want to be caught in it.

Math teacher Jeff Bowker had only one tardy the entire week of implementation, a significant improvement from an average of 35 per week before START. Students now rush to get from their classes to lockers and on to the next class in the seven-minute passing periods, with mixed results. Government and sociology teacher Tom Berg says he saw “at least one kid trip every passing period trying to get to class on time” on the first day, a cruel irony when the first word in the program’s acronym is “safe.”

Whatever their opinion on the policy, students are heeding it. Where students once lingered in the hallways, chatting until the last possible second, the corridors are now eerily deserted as soon as the warning bell sounds, save for a rushed straggler sprinting to class. The atmosphere will relax once everyone adjusts to the new system, but no one can doubt that this program has been successful from the start.

Eva Colberg is a junior at Colony High School.