School rules are always broken and when they are, someone ends up getting punished, but school punishments are becoming useless if punishments keep focusing on less important violations.
Attendance has recently been the main focus of school. It is crazy how the amount of tardies have become a main focus of a student, especially seniors. They are getting affected the most in these rules that the school decided to implement. Seniors can lose a lot of privileges, and it is unfair because these rules do a lot for attendance but nothing for safety.
Moreover, I think that everyone can agree schools could do a lot more to improve the lives of high schoolers when they are disciplined. We need teachers who can teach kids that doing illegal things at school is a real problem. Reflection rooms and writing about why students do what they do is not effective.
George Ruballos stated, “I don’t think the punishments are effective. The punishments we get aren’t threatening enough for us to change our ways.”
In the real world, people aren’t going to be writing about why they attacked someone, or why they abused and sold drugs. These people would be arrested, sent to prison, or worse, and get life sentences and death penalties.
I feel that fights, vaping, and many more things that happen at school are pushed to the side. What I am wondering is why tardies are being focused more than other problems when attendance isn’t even a big problem.
The attendance office had stated that out of the 2,213 students we have, this year’s current attendance rate is 93.7%. Last year, before the tardy slips, the attendance was at 90.7%.
If attendance is still this high, then why can’t schools prioritize drug abuse in school? The school needs to put the punishments towards something that is actually a problem. It is unreasonable to take events away from a senior because they were late. It is more reasonable to take away events from a senior who abused drugs in school.
Some people say that focusing on tardies could solve a lot of problems. Schools rely on students coming to school, and it is reasonable why they need to still be aware of attendance. Privileges can be taken and can threaten a senior to be always on time which helps attendance a lot.
They can easily do the same thing to drugs and fights. Schools could restrict students from graduating because of drugs brought to school or being in fights. Schools could force students to do community service. \
Stricter punishments can be a way to get students to stop. To influence these rules schools could have class meetings just like the grooming meetings.
It is insanely easy to enforce these rules. The only thing the school has to do is that they need to be strict. They need to teach these kids that it isn’t going to be easy in the real world. Sometimes scaring students about the real world can show them reality.
All in all, punishments in school have been completely focused on actions that don’t need to be punished. Some students might like the punishments and might think that they actually encourage people and make the school better. This doesn’t happen in the real world, schools need to change.
