Being late on the regular, but what does it truly mean for a SLOHS student’s your academic career? Photo courtesy of junior Makaylin Molinar.

  San Luis Obispo High School has a tardy policy and students who don’t follow it end up having consequences. Three tardies in one week and you have to serve detention after school. Once the numbers keep racking up of tardies the detentions become more.

  Ultimately, tardies are not that serious.

  Many kids daily at SLOHS are tardy to first period and fourth with those being the first class of the day and after lunch. Being marked tardy is shown in Aeries Portal and sent to your parents which may lead to a reaction. 

  “My parents get the message and text me immediately and feel a certain way about it but they don’t understand that I was less than a minute late. I truly think tardies don’t matter unless you have an excessive amount of them and are more than ten minutes late,” said senior Ruby Blackburn.

  Teachers shouldn’t be able to mark a tardy within the first 60 seconds of class with that being the buffer time of putting your phone up and getting the class quiet before the teacher begins to talk.

  “When I had math first period my teacher would give me grace for the first couple of minutes because it is the first period of the day and I feel like most teachers do that for first period but other periods are not the same but I feel like they should all collectively have the same rule,” said junior Shelbie Buckman.

  Additionally tardies also refer to a student not being in their seat when the bell rings but walking in the classroom when the bell rings. Each teacher has their own rules when it comes to that. Being in your seat leads to you needing an extra minute to put your phone up. Coming back from lunch sometimes there is traffic and you can’t walk all the way to the math building. 

  “Some days I am not able to make a detention for other reasons and I end up being served with another detention which leads to more issues with my attendance,” said junior Fiona Sweeney.

  On the other hand tardies are meant to be enforced so students go to class and detention is not supposed to be a “threat” it is just a small consequence.

  Being late to class can lead to a large information gap with the first 10-15 minutes of class being heavy loading for the itinerary of the class for the next couple of days.  It might even be a problem with a mental state.

Anxiety can make students drag their feet when heading somewhere, while depression can drain students motivation to even try.

  Ultimately tardies should be taken less seriously and each teacher should have the same policy and give a couple minutes of grace.

Source: Cleveland Clinic