Ventura High School put out a new late policy and the students are not liking it

I am late to at least one class per day and the new policy on it makes me really upset. I have a lot to do in the six minutes we have to get to class, and my classes are all over campus.

So, the fact that if I am one minute late, I could possibly get locked out of my classroom seems a little unfair. It is just pushing me further away from getting my education. If Ventura High wants us to get to class so badly but then lock us out if we don’t get there the exact second they want us to be, how does that make any sense? We are losing minutes in class by being locked out and/or having to go to detention. 

I think that it is way too drastic to give kids detention if they are a few minutes late. While I do understand the district’s need for students to get to class on time, I think it is way too much to punish them that harshly. There are times that students have legitimate reasons for being late, and the administration seems to have completely ignored that.

For example, did anyone think about the fact that we are late because some of us have classes across campus? It is not our fault that the campus was built so spread out and we only get six minutes to make it on time. There are multiple staircases and it is really hard to go up and down them with speed when there are hundreds of other kids going down them too. 

 There are also strange rules going along with the tardy detention. They are planning to shut the portable gates during breaks and students will now have to wait 10 minutes after class starts before being able to leave to use the restroom, go to their locker or get water. The 10 minute rule also bothers me because those first minutes are a good time to go because the instructions usually haven’t started yet and we aren’t missing out on the main part of class. Furthermore, I have never heard a story of a student getting hurt by the school not closing the gates to the portables or leaving class during the first 10 minutes. 

After talking to fellow student, junior Aja Madrigal, she came up with a good point: “There are way bigger issues at this school than tardies.” Which I agree with, the main focus of the administrators should not be on tardies.

Also, I want to have a split second break from class to talk to friends or go to my locker. Leaving one stressful class to immediately go to another, it is nice to talk to some people. 

Senior Hannah Christopherson-Grantshe said, “I am late a lot but they haven’t done anything, it isn’t really being enforced.” 

According to the student handbook, which was last updated in 2019, these rules have been in place for a while but now this year they are getting enforced. I don’t understand why they need to be enforced now if there has not been a problem with security in the past years. 

However, after speaking to Jaime Gallegos, one of Ventura High school’s campus security officers, he really insisted on the fact that these rules have always been in place. He also said that they have always been enforced. I think that it is very interesting to talk to the campus security about the late rules, it gave me a new perspective on how they just want kids to get to class, and how they feel about having to boss people around all the time. It does make sense from their perspective that students should just get to class on time, but it is still hard to get to class on time and I don’t totally agree with the policy. 

While I appreciate the need to keep us students safe, I personally think that these new rules are just a losing battle for the school officials and are not going to do much for the students or administrators.