Edwin Henriquez, a senior soccer player at Park View, has to attend team practices in the morning before school, leaving very little time to rest afterwards because he has to take a shower, eat breakfast, and get ready for school. After rushing through his morning routine, he has to speed to school only to be met by the long line of cars waiting in the senior parking lot, causing him to be late by a few minutes to class. Many senior student athletes have experienced this struggle.

“They should change the place where people who get dropped off from the senior lot because they hold up a lot of traffic, and it’s not fair that they make a lot of seniors late because of that!” said Henriquez.

Park View’s policy started at the beginning of the 2nd quarter. Mr. Elmo Green, an administrative intern, created the tardy policy because there were too many students coming late to class by more than just a few seconds, often by several minutes. 

“The sense of urgency to get to class is, seems to be, nonexistent here at Park View,” said Green. “It had to be addressed, and students got later, more and more students started walking their other friends to class, and being late to class, and it’s just pretty much unacceptable how it goes.”

Despite the intended purpose, most students don’t like it.

“If [students] are only a few seconds late and didn’t miss anything, don’t call their parents, just let it slide. If they are really late and [miss]  part of the class then yes I think that’s when they should be getting a strike towards ISR or whatever the punishment is,” said an anonymous senior at Park View.

In a survey given to Park View students, 87% of 31 respondents said they didn’t like the policy.

Even though most students don’t like it, there are some students who agree with the tardy policy.

“It makes people actually come to class on time. No one used to show up on time when they came back from lunch, but now more people do,” said an anonymous junior at Park View.

The tardy policy has created lots of controversy among students. Regardless of what students thought of it however, they all agreed that it needs improvement. 

“The number of tardies required to get ISR seems a little low. They need to make that number a little higher,” said an anonymous senior at Park View.

Part of the reason Park View hasn’t been able to enforce the policy thoroughly is because of the lack of staff available. Mr. Green thinks the policy could be improved by compiling data enforcing the consequences more regularly.

“We don’t have the manpower in the building to [enforce the policy] because I can’t do it alone. It takes the help of a lot of other staff to do so, and they are enervated with work and other things that they have to do that takes precedence over students being late to class,” Green commented.