Assistant Principal Mark Trocchio discusses how the school now enforces its tardy policy. Photo by Edward Fahman.by Brandon Nguyen, Staff Writer, and Caitlin Pham, News Editor
Most students already know about the new tardy and detention system that has been implemented this year and the consequences that are associated with each detention. However, some students are not aware of the changes made as to how they are supposed to serve the detentions.
“The reason why the new tardy system came into effect this year was because the old one was ineffective,” said Assistant Principal of Supervision Marc Trocchio. “We had kids with just dozens and dozens of tardy consequences that were never served; it was an ineffective policy. We would have kids come to the window to get tardy slips and it would take ten minutes out of their day in the morning instead of going to class.”
One of the major issues of the previous system was that many students would let the amount of detentions build until graduation. Students need to have their detentions cleared in order to participate in activities and graduate. Students that were consistently late would find themselves buried in detentions and would have to serve all of them.
“I just don’t like starting a year buried. Many of seniors and juniors were buried, so we given them a huge opportunity to get out of that huge hole. We went out of our way to completely clear people and give them a fresh start. So that’s our mission, we want all kids on campus to start fresh,” said Trocchio.
In order to give kids this fresh start, the school has changed the way that it now enforces consequences that result from tardies. Instead of allowing students to build up their amount of tardies, supervision is now requiring that all students serve their detentions within five days of receiving them. The student’s detention status is monitored from the moment they get it to the moment the serve it.
“On the fifth day we have a stack of detentions that we go through,” said Dawn Basquez of Supervision. “We go through to see who has served and who hasn’t served by the sixth day.”
The new enforcement policy’s goal isn’t to punish students but act as a way to benefit and help students. In fact student’s will not be punished the first few times. Consequences will only be given out to repeat offenders.
“We call those kids up and remind them and then we’ll give them usually another day or two. We give them methods to serve it but it has to be served within a certain amount of time,” said Basquez.
Should students continue to ignore the detentions, despite being reminded, they can expect consequences such as a call home from supervision as well as a future parent conference with Trocchio.
“Don’t be late, if you’re on time you’re late. Lombardi time, it’s always five to ten minutes ahead,” said Trocchio.
