Have you ever been tardy to a class or shown up late to school? Maybe you were 20 minutes late or even two minutes late and now your attendance has been marked. That is what is happening at Birmingham Charter High School (BCCHS), and the principal, Mr. Bennett, has put in a new tardy sweep system that has caused missing attendance spikes around the school.

In an interview, Mr. Bennett stated, “Birmingham is a great school, and I want it to put more emphasis on class attendance.” He wants to implement the idea that tardy sweeps are not a malicious way to stress out students, but a way to encourage students to be early to school.  

Although Mr. Bennett expressed his reasoning behind the tardy sweep system, there are still a lot of other variables that contribute to the students being late. They are not just students grabbing Starbucks or McDonald’s.

Approximately 116,000 students in California take public transportation, which is a big factor in why most students at BCCHS are tardy daily. In the same interview, Mr.Bennett expressed his perspective on tardiness due to public transportation issues. “I go back to the 90% that do make it on to class time, and a lot of those kids are taking public transportation, and they are able to get here on time.” 

In addition to the topic of public transportation, there is also another big factor in student attendance in not only public transportation, but for cars as well, and its traffic. In BCCHS, the congestion of cars reaches all of Balboa and other connecting streets like Sepulveda, Victory, and especially Vanowen. These challenges complicate students to get to school on time because they are in the minority. It is hard to say that the students have a choice of what time their parents take them to school. Mr.Bennet also expressed how he and the school are aware that there is lots of traffic and it also depends on when you leave your house as well. He also stated how “students are not numbers and we want to help”.

In conclusion, tardy sweeps in BCCHS were implemented to have less tardiness in student attendance and so they can try to teach students to be on time and normalize being early to school. Because of the spike in tardiness for students at BCCHS, there were many factors in the reasoning behind tardiness which involved traffic, bus use, and other personal reasons that can affect student tardiness.