As a high school of great academic achievement and hard working people, many students on campus want to use as much class time as possible, with being late to a class a bad choice for these students. However when a student is late, they must walk all the way to the tardy table and miss up to ten minutes of class which doesn’t seem like a good substitute for time that could be spent learning.

The tardy table provides benefits by not having the teachers take up class time to report a student tardy and allows them to focus on the other students needs. However, the tardy table has some downsides.

For instance, if a student is late by one minute they have to walk all the way to the cafeteria, wait in line, and then walk back to class, missing valuable time to learn. Everyone deserves the appropriate amount of time in class and with students having to go to the tardy table, they are missing even more class time. The later a student is, the greater the likelihood they will miss actual instruction as opposed to maybe missing part of a warmup.

With teachers able to mark a student tardy in eSchool, the tardy table system doesn’t make sense. If the school uses the current attendance system for a student that is tardy, all that needs to be done if for a teacher to check a box in eSchool. Instead, the school makes the student wait in line for a tardy pass forcing to student to miss even more time than if they had simply went straight to class. In middle school it was done with shorter class time; so why not do it in high school when we have longer periods and and more time to do it?
The tardy table is unnecessary. It doesn’t have much of an impact or benefit. As a school we should try to eliminate the tardy table and allow students to get the maximum amount of time.