For Whom the Bell Tolls: A Tardy Situation

During a Super Bowl party Sunday night the enthusiastic conversation swirling around the snack bar was not about whether the Giants would beat the Patriots again, but whether parents should be fined and possibly jailed when their children were tardy to school. As a retired teacher and one half of one of two sets of grandparents at the party, I listened closely to the reactions of the younger adults to that day’s Washington Post article, “Parents say Loudoun officials reaching too far to stop school tardies” (Emma Brown February 4, 2012). All were parents with school age kids ranging from pre-kindergarten to eleventh grade. 

Much of the conversation revolved around a comment made by the mother of the family that was the focus of the article. As quoted in the Post, she said, “It’s not my goal that the kids are late, but my goal is that they arrive to school well-fed, ready to learn and comfortable in their skin.” When she heard this, the mother of a pre-kindergartener and a second grader rolled her eyes and said about her oldest child, “Emily knows that we leave for the bus stop at 6:50 sharp. Whatever she has finished eating by then is what she gets that morning.” Harsh? Not according to the other parents who nodded their agreement, because all of the anecdotes they shared regarding the difficulty of getting everyone out the door and to school or work were connected by one underlying goal: teaching their kids to be responsible and showing this by their actions.

To me, responsibility is the paramount issue behind this much publicized circumstance just as it is in most human interactions. As John Donne said, “No man is an island.”  Every word we utter, every action we commit has an effect, a reaction and/or a consequence on other people. On the first day of school each year that I taught I told my classes, “We are all on a two-way street named Responsibility, Reliability, Respect and No Excuses. You all should and can expect me to follow these tenets, and I ask you to do the same.”

What kind of life would we all experience if, say, fire crews were tardy getting to our flaming homes because they wanted to arrive “well-fed”? The same can be asked about the police, medical personnel or even the wait staff at our favorite restaurants. Are they ready to perform their duties even if they aren’t “comfortable in their own skin” that day? As for the politicians who have a responsibility to their constituents, well, we all have felt the consequences for their tardy responses to their duties, and it hasn’t been pretty.

When parents don’t instill the virtue of responsibility in their children, and role model it themselves they are sending the message that their personal agendas are more important than those of the school system and of everyone who comprises it. A child may be dropped off at the school door one or two minutes late, but by the time he or she gets to the classroom, five or more minutes could have passed. By this time, the teacher has settled the other students and started into the day’s work. Enter the tardy child, and those five minutes have been lost. The concentration of the rest of the class is disrupted as the late student weaves his/her way to his/her seat while greeting friends along the way. Those not familiar with the difficulty of keeping twenty-five or more young people on task might just shrug and blow this disruption off as no big deal. It can be a major headache, though, for those teachers who have students who are ready and willing to fool around or who have difficulty staying on task. And after almost three decades in the classroom I can fully attest to the fact that every class contains at least one child who will, at that point of interruption, require the teacher’s full time and
attention to bring back into the fold.

Also, the teacher will now have to change the late student’s attendance record from Absent to Tardy. I don’t know about other schools, but in the one where I spent the majority of my career, teachers were responsible for taking roll during the first fifteen minutes of class. If we didn’t, we suffered the consequences, from minor for a first-time offense to more disciplinary for further transgressions. Taking attendance is a professional responsibility. Numerous times within the first thirty minutes after the bell, one, two and even three or more students would saunter into my class at varying intervals. Each time, I had to make the choice of reopening the program on the computer and changing the record right then, or writing down the names to input after class, often while kids surrounded my desk with questions or requests. Either way, my decision eroded valuable teaching time.

The notoriety that might occur when school administrators pull the parents into court for misdemeanor charges because of tardiness could likely have far-reaching negative effects for the parents and their children, too. Every one of us knows that yes, mean kids do exist. These children relish getting under the skins of their more innocent or vulnerable peers. Although I don’t know of the resiliency to peer jeers that the children of the family in this article hold, I sure hope it is three-ply durable. I hope they won’t, but I fear that they might need this emotional muscle because of the print and broadcast media frenzy this issue has raised.

Another concern is that both the parents and the children will now look at the school system as an uncaring and hostile place, just the opposite of the nurturing, safe environment all schools work to create. Will threatening the parents with court action affect the kids’ aspirations to succeed in school or debilitate their desire learn? Will it lessen their respect for other school rules? Will the parents drop their support of the school system when it is so vital for academic, athletic and social success? And since school success does take a village, how will other
parents react if they feel the system’s actions are retaliatory and insular instead of collaborative and all-encompassing?

Regular school attendance is the law, and tardiness is a part of this although it usually isn’t specifically addressed in state statutes. Why can’t the courts be a last resort instead of a first response, though? Before school administrators chastise my thoughts, let me say that I’m sure that a regular pattern of absenteeism or tardiness must be shown before the parents are served with summonses. Between the first and straw-breaking, tardy, though, have administrators asked the parents to come in for a conference to discuss this issue? Have they sent attendance officers to the homes to check if underlying issues exist and offer help and support?  If so, and the problem still occurs, have they held detention Saturdays for the parents since I know that some schools make the kids serve this corrective measure? During this time professionals could be there to offer suggestions to alleviate the stress of the morning routines. Clear communication is crucial in all relationships. The lack of it can cause unfortunate and often tragic consequences.

I agree with the mother of the focus family in this article that “punctuality,” in and of itself is not the “be-all end-all”. But is punctuality the issue here, or responsibility?  Just a thought.