Is Greenfield High School's Tardy Policy Working?

Principal Paul Thusius raised quite a few eyebrows in late March when he decided to take an unorthodox approach to Greenfield High School’s massive first-hour tardy problem.

The results so far may raise a few more.

It’s been nearly six weeks since Thusius determined any student tardy for his or her first-hour class would spend the entire hour in the school’s Performing Arts Center rather than be allowed to go to that class late.

Through the end of April, since the new policy was put in place March 21, an average of 24.7 students have had an unexcused first-hour tardy. That’s down 285 percent from the average of 70.3 unexcused first tardies according to data compiled for approximately one month just prior to the new policy’s implementation.

“We’ve had a low day of nine and a high day of 52 – I don’t know why that happened that day – so there’s been some fluctuation,” since the new policy has been in place, Thusius said. “But it is a pretty significant change.”

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The new policy has had minimal impact on unexcused absences, when a student misses first hour entirely without a valid, excusable reason, or the school’s truancy rate. Unexcused absences have dipped slightly from an average of four before the policy change to 3.7 after.

Truancy has risen from an average of 23.7 cases per day before the policy to 25.1 after. Those numbers include all students who were absent for first hour and were not called in, and a majority of those students are truant the entire day. Thusius said a good chunk of those cases are students that never show up to school.

But the group Thusius was targeting with his change seems to be responding. He said there is still a group of approximately 10 habitually tardy students he hasn’t been able to reach – they’re late three to five times a week and “they think (the policy) is stupid,” Thusius said. But many students reacted the way Thusius hoped they would.

“I don’t like to try to manipulate behavior by issuing consequences, but it seems like it’s something I had to do,” he said. “But it has changed the way first hour looks and feels.”

Thusius said the high school staff has been, perhaps unsurprisingly, 100 percent behind the policy, mostly because first-hour classes are no longer interrupted by a parade of students waltzing through the door 5, 10 or even 20 minutes after the first bell.

The public’s reaction to the new policy, at least when Greenfield Patch first reported it in March, was overwhelmingly positive. Thusius believes that is the case offline as well.

“I didn’t get any calls that said it’s the best idea, I’m glad you’re doing this, at least not from parents,” he said. “I’ve gotten those from the teachers, but not the parents.

“But in the first day or two, I only got a few calls from parents who were very emotional, very upset about it. ‘It’s not fair, we spend all this money on the high school and the traffic patters are terrible and it’s not fair.’ They expressed their opinions then, but I haven’t heard back from them. And it was literally two people.”