As tardies, truancies and course failures began to add up, administration has put into place a ‘Good Standing Policy’ for the 2023-2024 school year, with outline requirements to attend school dances and events.
According to the student handbook, Good Standing is defined as maintaining passing grades in half of the scheduled classes and attending school for 90% or more of the school days available in a quarter (semester at Millard West). Block one tardies don’t count for the Good Standing Policy, only tardies and absences from blocks 2-8 are tracked.
“The new policy states that students that are absent more than 10% of days, or have 12 or more tardies, or failing more than half of their classes will not be in good standing, and will not be able to purchase tickets for homecoming or prom,” assistant principal Mr. Lundgren said. “Medically excused absences or absences due to school activities will not count toward the total.
Many students have mixed opinions about this new policy. Senior Michael Bartholomew was asked his thoughts on this new policy at Millard West.
“I think the idea is good but with the new scheduling that Millard West has this year, it makes it hard for some seniors to arrive to classes on time on certain days,” Bartholomew said.
With the new schedule, many seniors don’t have the same class times as the rest of the school. As a senior, if you have enough classes taken, you can take half days. But with the new schedule, a senior could have a first block and no second block, then have to go back to school. This requires seniors to be more on top of being tardy and absent since they aren’t at school all day.
“The ,” senior Jordan Gassen said. “Many students struggle with frequent attendance because of all sorts of reasons like transportation and just lack of motivation.”
Students that always used to roll into class a couple minutes late or just decided not to show up on certain days years before, are having to change the way they go on about their day. This is for the better of these students because it is a bad habit to pick up not showing up to school or showing up late. The Good Standing Policy will teach these students to arrive on time and it will teach them a valuable life lesson on being on time to things.
“Attending homecoming and prom are a privilege,” Lundgren said. “If a student can’t make school a priority, they will not be allowed to attend. Millard West is actually the last of the three Millard high schools to implement this policy. North and South have had success with a Good Standing Policy, which contributed to our decision to implement it here.”
In the long run, this policy will set the students up for success and Millard West put in this policy to help out all of the students for the future. Although the students won’t be happy about it now, later in life they will be glad that they have the skill of being on time to things. The other Millard schools have this policy put into place already and the cutoff date is when Homecoming is, which is on September 30th. That is when the cutoff date is for the Good Standing Policy.
