In the past few months, there has been a interesting change implemented into our halls at Ames High. We have a new tardy system, and everyone I know dislikes it. I’ve even heard hall monitors say that its faulty.  If you are in the hallway when the bell rings, you must walk all the way back to the office to get and tardy pass. This applies even to those who are right outside the ‘pod’ that holds which class they are going to. This system results in countless people becoming even more late than they would have been if they had just been let into their class.  

For example, someone who’s almost to their class has the bell ring at 8:30. They are told to go back to the office and have to wait in a line of other late students. I’ve heard many people say the line can to be up to 30-40 people at the very start of the day. There the student has to wait until they get a pass from one of the two ladies working at our front desk. After retrieving a pass they must now walk back to where they were (possibly having to also wait for a hall monitor to open the doors once they get there) and then finally get to class, probably 15 minutes or more late than they would have been.

As much as the secretaries and the hall monitors are trying to keep this system efficient, it is simply flawed. So many more students have started becoming late. Lots of teachers have stacks of these tardy passes in their classes.

I decided to ask a few of the seniors about the system, if they thought it was better than how things were working last year. “I’m rarely late but I have definitely heard other people say that this new system isn’t working for them and how it makes them later to classes,” senior Kaylee Urbina said. Others said they agreed.

My theory is we could leave the doors open for 2-5 minutes after the bell rings, just so those students close by get to class. Or we could implement a newer but possibly more expensive system that scans our IDs in each pod. It seems like there’s a lot of ways to solve this problem that originally wasn’t there.

Maybe we never should’ve tried to put in a new system!