Westside Middle School recently introduced a new tardy policy in response to a high amount of tardies throughout the school. According to Westside Middle School Principal Kimberly Eymann, the new policy makes it much more difficult for students to skip class, and punishes tardies more severely than before.

“The WMS staff agreed that tardies were a problem,” Eymann said.

Dean of Students Corrie Philo said that the Middle School reported over 20,000 tardies last year.

“Our goal for our tardy plan is to encourage students to get to class on time to optimize instructional time for all students,” Philo said.

Eymann said that the new system works by teachers monitoring the hall more consistently.

“Teachers are assigned areas to monitor and sweep students that are not in class by the time the bell rings,”  Eymann said.

Eymann said the new system has been successful thus far. 

“At the beginning of the year there was a learning curve because it was new to the eighth graders,” Eymann said. “They caught on quickly and [now] students work hard to get to class on time.”

According to Eymann, Westside Middle School has had a massive decrease in tardies from the last school year to the current one, with the first quarter having 1,511 tardies and quarter two only having 659. Philo said that they attribute this to the student’s hard work.

“The majority of our students are doing a fantastic job of getting to class on time,” Philo said. “Our tardies have decreased by about 75% first semester this year compared to the first semester last year.”

Philo said she thinks the goal of 70% less tardies is very achievable.

“By having a systematic program in place, students know what the expectations are,” Philo said. “They are held accountable [and it] makes the goal [more] easily achievable.”