Combatting tardiness: South Coast schools use data, relationships to increase student attendance

When Apponequet Regional High School students get to school late, they can expect to be handed a paper slip for their tardiness. While many schools use more efficient technology to notify kids and their parents of tardies — such as an automatic email or phone call — Apponequet has stuck to a more old-fashioned approach.

Assistant Principal Nicholas Pilla said using a physical late slip has helped humanize disciplinary measures, a process he said is “old school, but I like because it forces me to go up and have a face-to-face conversation.” 

It’s one part of the school’s strategy for ensuring students are in their seats and ready to learn when the bell rings. 

High schoolers show up to school late for many reasons. Some can’t resist an early-morning coffee stop while some stay awake too late on their phone and don’t wake up in time. Others struggle with serious mental health issues or complicated family lives that make timeliness difficult.

Area public schools have taken different approaches to solving the problem, like buy-back programs to reduce punishments at Middleboro and Apponequet Regional high schools to one-on-one checkins at Old Colony Regional Vocational Technical High School, to try to get students in their seats by the time the first bell rings. 

School leaders around the South Coast all trace today’s tardiness habits back to the pandemic. Absenteeism spiked during the COVID-19 pandemic and, for many schools, it still hasn’t returned to 2010s levels.

Apponequet Regional High School Principal Kahlan Dessert said the school has been fighting to instill timeliness as a priority for students. 

“Seat time matters,” she said. “I know Covid might have made that seem different, but we're back baby, we have been for a long time — it matters to be here.”

Many area schools stopped tracking tardies during the pandemic, often because of the difficulties managing remote classes. While attendance was tracked, most schools found it difficult to keep track of students logging into class late.

Tardiness data has become a crucial metric for teachers and principals, but varying definitions still means it’s not tracked statewide. However, tardiness across the South Coast has surged in recent years, according to records from local high schools.

Nemasket Week’s sister paper Sippican Week collaborated with The New Bedford Light to understand how schools have used this data to address chronic absenteeism and tardiness since the pandemic.

Coming to school late sometimes is an early warning sign of a student’s disengagement, or maybe that they’re dealing with challenges outside of school. For classes in the early morning, tardiness can have the same effect on student learning as being absent. 

In Lakeville and Middleborough, administrators meet one-on-one with students to offer a way to erase late arrivals from their records.

Both offer “buyback” programs for students to earn excusals for tardies when they arrive on time for a set number of days.

For every 10 consecutive school days Apponequet Regional High School students show up on time, one tardy is removed. 

Assistant Principal Nicholas Pilla said committing to never being late again can feel overwhelming for students, and this program gives them a short-term goal to focus on. 

Dessert said communication with students and families and consistency in policy enforcement have helped reduce tardiness.

Despite these reductions, not riding the bus is one of the most common reasons students arrive late.

Assistant Principal Jeffrey Gallant said post-pandemic, the number of parents bringing students to school has risen. He said that due to greater awareness of infectious diseases, more parents now opt to drop their kids off instead of sending them on the “tight, confined space” of a bus. 

Chronic tardiness at Middleborough High School results in a loss of after-school privileges, when students are put on social probation after their 10th tardy in a quarter.

Similar to Apponequet, Middleborough has a buyback policy. Along with excusing tardies, Middleborough students can also earn an end to their probation.

This has been effective, according to Assistant Principal Andrew Dizel.

“Students genuinely do not want to miss out on dances or going to a Friday night football game or a basketball game.”

Assistant Principal Jeffrey Gallant said post-pandemic, the number of parents bringing students to school has risen. He said that due to greater awareness of infectious diseases, more parents now opt to drop their kids off instead of sending them on the “tight, confined space” of a bus.  

Meanwhile, vocational schools have seen some of the lowest rates of absenteeism and tardiness — but they’re still not immune.

Old Colony principal Gary Llinehan said he sees two distinct groups of tardy students at his school.

For students who occasionally show up late with coffee in hand, he said a simple call home often fixes the problem. Progressive discipline, one-hour, two-hour and Saturday detentions depending on the number of tardies, also encourages timeliness.

Chronic tardiness, he said, is most common among students from low-income families or who struggle with their mental health. In these cases, administrators involve parents and counselors to find a solution.

"It's a complex issue because every kid's different,” Linehan said. “We try to be as consistent as we can with the policy, but we also try to be understanding of certain situations”

At Old Colony, this means finding the root cause of the tardiness and creating a plan to address it, usually including frequent check-ins with the adjustment counselor. 

Some South Coast students said their peers who are often tardy are the ones who aren’t connected to the school. Councilors said strong friendships, relationships with teachers, and involvement in extracurricular activities motivated them to show up on time. They said their peers who come to school late, if at all, tend to lack those connections.

Upper Cape Cod Regional Technical High School senior Ally Webb said classmates who aren’t involved in a club or sport are more likely to be tardy. “The kids that are really invested in the school and their commitments often are the ones that show up just because they have a reason to be here,” Webb said. 

This examination of tardiness at schools serving Middleboro and Lakeville students is part of a larger collaboration with the New Bedford Light. The full collaboration is a two-part online series that explores the challenges local schools face in tracking and reducing tardiness, and what solutions are addressing the problem. To read part one, click here and for part two click here.