Collinsville High School is conducting tardy sweeps to help improve overall attendance for students after seeing an increase in tardies.

“We made the decision to begin utilizing tardy sweeps based on the increasing number of tardies to class on a daily basis,” said principal Wright. “Incentives fell short of enticing students to improve their punctuality.”

The tardy sweeps final goal is to improve attendance in students and get them in class more. Tardy sweeps will also continue to occur randomly throughout the school day. 

“The team does believe that random tardy sweeps will improve overall tardy counts to class,” said Wright. “Random tardy sweeps will likely occur for the remainder of the year.”

Punctuality is one key to good habits. “Getting to class ON TIME is incredibly important to ensure that we maximize instructional time, while also minimizing opportunities for students to make inappropriate choices during unstructured time,” said Wright. “If every tardy was roughly 30 seconds then we lost 112.15 instructional hours in the fall semester. We have to do better if we want to see improvements in our academic achievement.”

Ms. Kurtz, a school counselor said, “Stress is going to be lower if you’re on time because you won’t be missing anything or instructions. It helps students not lose parking spots, avoids getting discipline offenses, and generally helps students get prepared for their future careers, practicing good habits and routines of being on time.”

To help students get to class and school on time, Ms. Kurtz was asked what are some ways students could improve their first hour attendance. She said, “Being more prepared and planning, looking at their routine and seeing how they can manage their time better and plan stuff out, getting enough sleep, seeing if you can do things the night before, setting multiple alarms, seeing if taking different transportation is more helpful to avoid being tardy.” 

Students were asked about how they feel about the tardy sweeps, and if it will help improve their attendance.

Junior Jakoby Washington said, “I think that the tardy sweeps are a good way of getting people to class, but at the same time it’s bad for those people who normally get to class on time but just have one tardy and end up getting a disciplinary offense; however, I noticed improvement in my attendance after hearing about the tardy sweeps and I believe it has benefited many other students.”

CHS continues to sweep for tardies and now includes checking for ID’s and cell phones.