RB’s newest system for tardies, the HERO system, has brought about a lot of complaints in the student body. Is there a reason to complain? This system involves students who are arriving late to class to go to a HERO scanning station and receive a pass. The scanning system marks that student tardy in Skyward. None of the actual consequences for being tardy have changed, but now the teachers are no longer able to mark tardies at their discretion. They have to close the door when the last bell rings after the five minute passing period.

We are concerned with how effective the system truly is. There is no doubt that students who have never been on time to first hour are suddenly booking it. No one wants to have to travel to one of the stations scattered around the building just to get a pass. But is it targeting the right group of kids?

There is a difference between being a few seconds late and a few minutes late and the HERO system doesn’t account for that. Before, if a student was going to walk into class within 10 seconds of the bell ringing, a teacher would have let the student into class and would mark a tardy at their discretion. Now that student that wasn’t going to miss even a minute of class is going to miss several minutes of class, which is what this system is trying to avoid.

The average number of tardies marked each period last semester was 8.5. From the week of HERO’s implementation on February 15 to the last full week ending on March 11, the average number of tardies ranged from 17.5 to 13.8. Due to weather, tardies were not marked one day during first period, and one week was a four-day week.

This average jump of  about five additional unexcused tardies marked each period makes sense considering it’s the first month of the system. Students are adjusting. But there is no doubt that some of these additional tardies are because of students who were going to be tardy by seconds, and possibly not marked tardy before by their teacher. Now those students have to go to a scanning station and be officially marked in the system.

There is a difference between being late by a few seconds occasionally and being late by seconds every day. Is HERO curving the consistently tardy students from constantly arriving late? There is no doubt that it is.  But the actual act of getting a HERO pass is forcing a student to be more late and potentially disrupting class even more than before.

Students who are consistently late may not take the system as seriously as they need to. The system is supposed to put as many students in class as possible. Instead it may hurt those students who are occasionally late by less than a minute and be ineffective for those who are consistently late.

This system is going to frustrate some but at the end of the day it will become the new normal.  Most students are on time to class anyway. For most students at RB, this isn’t anything new. RB has always had the expectation for students to be on time, so overall the expectation for students hasn’t changed. This is simply a new way of doing it.

The entire Clarion staff contributed to this editorial.

The 2015-16 Clarion staff includes: McKenna Powers, Niko Radicanin, Kiera Donnamario, Morgan Divittorio, Alexia Kingzette, Nick Rogoz, Zach Hundreiser, Paul Kritikos, Galen Alaks, Isabel Hughes, Lauren Lambros, Vivian Pina, Gabby Tarrant, Cameron Bolton, Emily Gately, Julia Buffo, Connor Robey, Michael Fanta, Micah Rookus, Brandon Bennett, Pawaran “Kai” Mongkhonkham, and Dennis Ryan