by Lauren Loveless | staff writer
Exemption forms will be due in December and students might find that the new tardy sweeps will have a greater impact on their exam schedule than anticipated.
“Just like absences, [tardy sweeps] are documented; each time a tardy goes in and it’s really just accumulated like absences are, we just track it in the same kind of way,” Vice Principal Stuart Guthrie said.
Tardy sweeps are now able to count against students on exemptions creating more concern than in year’s past.
“Tons of kids will be affected because of tardy sweeps. This has been the best year since I’ve been here, at getting kids in the classroom on time and from an administrative perspective our teachers have done a great job because they’re the ones out there doing the tardy sweeps. But from an administrative perspective, our goal is to get kids in front of their teachers for the maximum amount of time and even if it’s 50 or 75 kids missing one or two minutes, that adds up,” Guthrie said.
Technically, tardy sweeps counting towards exemptions wasn’t an administrative decision, as every other school in the district follows the same guidelines.
“All the exemption policies are district policies, if you go to school at MacArthur, Churchill, Reagan, their documents for exemptions are shared with all of us, it’s across the board. The reason they do that is for equity, you want to make sure that if you’re a student at Johnson and you transfer to Churchill, you’re held to the same exact standard. It wouldn’t be fair for us to have different rules than Churchill and Reagan,” Guthrie said.
In order to help inform students about the impact tardy sweeps will have, administrators will soon begin to discuss these terms by using a system called “4, 3, 2, 1”.
“4, 3, 2, 1 stands for is – it’s for the kids, three topics, second period, one time. The idea is that every student on campus has a second period class, and all the administrators split up the classrooms equally and we each have a script and we each go to those particular classrooms and we talk about topics. For example, this month the topic is tardies and exemptions, social media, good choices, and lunch behavior,” Guthrie said.
The goal for the staff, however, is to make sure that students are able to get as many exemptions as possible, which is why 4, 3, 2, 1 is helping out.
“The reason that we’re letting them know now, a full month ahead of when we do exemptions, is because they need to be aware. They need to share with their parents: hey I got some tardies, this is going to impact my exemptions. So we anticipate quite a number of students having tardies potentially impact their exemptions,” Guthrie said.
