Editorial: Tardy sweeps don’t work

By Jeremy L. and Joshua C.

Our school’s tardy sweeps in the morning are not working. The tardy sweeps began in January and are still ongoing, as explained in the article “Why are we having tardy sweeps” by Maria M.. It’s clear that many students strongly dislike the new tardy sweeps and so does the editorial board. The tardy sweeps in the morning are just a horrible system, and students are still coming late to school in the morning.

There are several reasons for why the tardy sweeps don’t work.

One major reason is that being late is sometimes out of students’ control. There are students who don’t arrive on time due to the bus being late or there being traffic, and sometimes they do not have someone to drop them off. The tardy sweeps just make students more late or pressured to rush to school causing students to make irrational decisions. Teachers still end up making the students who are late sign the tardy sheet, which makes the tardy slip unnecessary.

The tardy sweeps may have unintended consequences. A student may ditch their first period for fear of getting caught in the tardy sweeps, or as attendance counselor Ms. del Castillo said the problem now is that “students come later or until the next period when there’s no tardy sweeps.” Getting caught in the tardy sweep four times means students get detention, and they end up losing their lunch time. So students who know they won’t make it in time would just ditch first period as they wouldn’t get caught in the tardy sweep.

There’s another problem with these tardy sweeps: the music that plays over the PA speaker makes the tardy sweeps really irritating. The music makes us feel like we are animals in a circus. It is really loud, especially in the morning and it just further irritates students.

One of our editors shared their experiences with tardy sweeps and stated that he came in late one morning and there was a tardy sweep going on. He was walking on campus and was heading his way into the hallway to make it to class. He heard a staff member calling him back because he was late. He had to walk back outside making him even more late and they had to give him his tardy sweep slip to get into class.

The right thing to do is have tardy sweeps abolished and instead of finding a way to punish students, maybe find more ways to reward them for coming to school on time.

What do you think? Let us know by writing a letter to the editor.