WOODBURY – You’re flying through the school parking lot (at the prescribed speed limit, of course), quite literally, trying to fight traffic and the chaos of the morning. Your day started off inauspiciously. To start, you slept through your alarm, then your dog threw up all over the floor, and then you lost one of your sneakers under your bed. What else can go wrong?  

Under normal circumstances, this wouldn’t bother you as much because you haven’t been late yet this year. I mean, we all experience mornings here and there, including teachers, administration staff, and even the president has been late to events. However, with more changes to the rules this year, (because why not?) even if you are late to school by just thirty seconds, you will still be issued a lunch detention no matter the excuse. 

These lunch detentions add insult to injury. 

More often than not, being tardy is beyond our control. Since NHS students are from all over, specifically fourteen surrounding towns, many factors can play into being late. One student, Raymond Lomax, an NHS senior, shares his experience with being late that was beyond his control.

“One time I was late to school because there was a two-hour-delay for Region 14,” Lomax remembers. “However, my district had a three-hour-delay so I had to follow that schedule. If I were to leave before then, the road conditions may have been too dangerous to drive on if they weren’t plowed already.”

This leads to the question, why do we need to go as far as issuing lunch detentions for being late to school? Don’t these lunch detentions add salt to the wounds of NHS students who have already experienced enough chaos in their day? 

So, before I get too carried away and continue to bash the new, seemingly unnecessary policy, let’s get the viewpoint from the person who put this new rule into place, Dr. Mykal Kuslis. 

“Last year the tardy numbers on average by the end of the year were about 25-30 tardies per day,” says Kuslis. “This was way out of control and we decided we needed to make a change.”  

Understandably, this many tardies per day was unacceptable, so it makes sense that a change was made. Administration is pushing perfect attendance so much that every week there is a raffle for students who had perfect attendance all week, giving them a chance to win a gift card. To go along with this, in March, a pizza party will be held for the class that has the best overall attendance for the year. 

However, the only problem with all of this is that it is punishing students who are almost never late. A personal example of mine is when I walked through the door as the bell was ringing on Senior Field Day. Unfortunately, for me I was still issued a lunch detention even though I was a senior who was participating, and had to serve it the next day.  

Now, reducing the amount of tardies for the year is a reasonable goal for the school.
However, the lunch detention policy can be changed to something much better, that can benefit all students. Maybe, for example, a system is implemented where a certain amount of tardies is equal to a lunch detention instead, rather than immediately punishing you.

In the end, things happen in life, and teens especially can’t control that, so shouldn’t school policies take this into account and be more flexible?

It’s often said that the greatest ability in life is availability. NHS students are almost always available, illustrated in the 96.5% attendance rate for the senior class this March, yet NHS continues to punish them when life happens. 

This piece is an opinion piece written by senior reporter Joseph Abaire ’25.