Late to Class… Again?

The minute warning bell rings at 6:59 A.M., and a student at Sierra Vista High School continues to struggle running up the stairs trying their absolute best to make it to class before the final bell rings. Once they finally make it to the hallway they need to enter, they swing the door open and sprint 5 doors down to their class. Right before they can even grab the door handle, the clock strikes 7 a.m. and not a second later, they get a notification from Infinite Campus, marking them tardy.

At Vista, a student’s first three tardies are marked as just a warning. The fifth and sixth consequence would require a parent conference, while the seventh requires in-house suspension, and the eighth repercussion includes Saturday school (8 A.M.-12 P.M. in the FAIR portable). The 10th is RPC, followed by five days of the FAIR Academy Program, which includes a required uniform.

Alexis Price, a junior at SVHS said, “I drive myself to school and sometimes I have to take my brother to school as well,”

“He never leaves on time, no matter how much time I give him and so it always ends up making me late to my first period.” continued Price.

For students like Price, their tardies can quickly add up just from that one class so they would not be able to be tardy again without having to deal with school’s consequences.

“Once I got so many tardies from just my first period alone that my mom had to sign me in before school but she couldn’t because she had to go to work early,” said Price.

“At this point I just don’t go to my first period if I know I am going to be late because I find an absence better than a tardy.” continued Price.

The tardy consequences will all count as the same and do not progress on their own for each different class. However, the number of tardies a student has resets each quarter.

Luckily, if a student rides the bus to school and the bus fails to get them to school on time, they are welcome to get a late bus pass to exempt their tardiness. The office will not accept tardy notes, as they must excuse the tardy by having a parent sign them in at the Dean’s Office. Failure to complete any of the above consequences will result in an out-of-school suspension.