ByAngelTran – NEWS –
Hallway Sweeps made a reappearance this quarter, but did they make a difference? And what will the policy look like next year?
All year long, Lincoln High School has not experienced the dreaded hallway sweep known from previous years. Then, on April 18th, 2017, the administration brought back random sweeps throughout the halls in order to “catch” students who are frequently late to class or skip class often. But what does this mean for students who aren’t usually late or skip class, but are unlucky enough to find themselves in a tardy sweep?
“I’ve never been caught or anything, but I know people who have,” sophomore Frazzie Wynn said. “And nothing was really done about it.”
At least that’s some students’ perception. Others have had consequences that they find very strict.
This new policy states, “The first time a student is caught, a parent will be contacted and the student will be taken to class. The second time a student is caught, he/ she will be sent home for the remainder of the day. A parent meeting will be required before the student returns to class the next day.” Students and staff have different opinions about the new procedure.
“I am a firm believer that you do need to be in class and in school to learn,” English teacher Justin Holbein said. “I think the students that we are trying to encourage to go to class and the students who are continually tardy, are the ones we should focus on.”
“I just don’t think it’s a cool thing to do,” Josh Mfinanga said. “They’re overreacting to people not being in class. It’s extreme to send people home.”
Prior to this new tool, there was no single policy for tardies and truancies. So what rules and on what basis were administrators, teachers, and security staff using to punish students for not being in class on time or at all? Principal Mark Larson sat down with us to explain.
“There have been situations where we have asked students not to come to school until a parent meeting is held,” Larson said. “And typically that is not more than a day or maybe two, and sometimes it gets parents and kids’ attention the next morning which is ideal. The goal is not for us to have students that are out of school but when there are issues at a rise that are important and that we need to address, we want to make sure to get parent input and parent involvement to be able to get to the root of the issue.”
There are kind of three groups or issues that Larson identified.
“One being students who are late to class, which is an issue,” Larson said. “Two, students who are in the building but [are] not in their assigned areas, or are really late or they are truant, and then we have some students who are truant [and] are not here in the building at all.”
The focus of the sweeps was to identify the second group of students; those not where they are supposed to be during class time.
“Our hallway sweeps aren’t intended to catch kids who are a minute or two minutes late to their classes,” Larson said. “What we are trying to cut down on are the number of students who are in the hallway without a pass and are kind of hanging out.”
Who creates these policies and what are they based upon?
“We have an attendance team that meets weekly that includes people like Mr. Heineman, some of our counselors, our school nurse, and a lot of different peo- ple to talk about students who aren’t attending regularly,” Larson said.
The perception among many people in the building is that there either are no consequences for skipping class, or that the penalties are inconsistent.
“It’s really crazy because I never [realized] how many people are around in the halls until I thought about it.” Wynn said. “But at the same time, I sometimes think they could be stricter because these [consequences] seem bad, but I don’t hear about anything happening.”
“I think this year we have done a lot of the collabora- tive plan piece,” Larson said. “That is something that is not necessarily in the student handbook, but is part of the LPS policy and is actually a state regulation. Other things like tardy sweeps, hallways sweeps, are things that we have tried and that we think will make an impact. I think we have had varying degrees of success with those things, but I think communicating those policies and hav- ing them written in the handbook would be important, and I think we know there are things we wanted to try with the idea that we could be ready or have some of the kinks worked out by the time school starts next year.”
What about the security cameras? How are they being used?
“I think we’re still learning about how that [security camera system] can help with attendance,” Larson said. “We have had cameras for the second year now, and
we have primarily used those to review incidents that have happened in the past,” Larson said. “We can also view live camera feeds, and we want to continue to find ways to be able to use that capability to help us keep the building safe and follow up with students who are not in their assigned areas, and that is what we are working to improve on and use that resource the best we can.”
The live camera feeds could enable us to monitor the hallways during class periods and locate students who are frequently late or truant, as well as improve the safety of our building. For example, students who often let
other people into the building through side doors could be allowing potential danger into our school. Wouldn’t it be important to oversee traffic coming into our building? Part of that problem is that someone would have to be hired to monitor them.
Lincoln High School has a total of five campus super- visors and one permanent security entrance monitor at the front doors. Campus supervisors rotate to cover the South Building entrance. That leaves four supervisors to monitor the halls. Now separate north and south building, and that gives us eight floors, over 50 doors, with almost 2,000 students to be monitored for 14 hours a day, five days a week. That is clearly not enough supervisors to effectively cover the entire building.
The shortage of supervisors is not entirely Lincoln High’s fault. The district organizes schools by ‘points’ using a staff-to-student ratio in order to determine the amount of new-hires and continuing numbers of staff in any school. The principal can use those points however they want to, but if they choose to apply them to campus supervi- sors, that takes points away from being able to hire teachers. It’s a tricky balance.
What the district doesn’t realize is that our demographics are different than other schools, the circumstances are different, and there is a need for more campus security. Realistically, our need for the extra security should not be based off of population. Security is safety. We need more campus supervisors, and those supervisors could help solve many of our attendance issues, as well as put some of our minds at ease regarding safety. What would be ideal would be extra points specifically to hire more campus supervisors.
Larson says another piece of the problem is classroom engagement.
“When we think about our students, [we also need to think about] our teachers who are the best at engaging students in the classroom,” Larson said. “My goal is that we have kids who want to go to their classes because they enjoy their teachers, they have a relationship with their teachers, the kids in their classes, and they know that they are going to get amazing, engaging instruction, every period, every day. And that is something that, as
a staff, we want to continue to improve in – making our classrooms and making our classes places that kids want to be in and want to go to.”
“I think as much as I look at data, sometimes it’s interesting that there are some of our students who struggle with attendance, most of them don’t miss every period,” Larson said. “And when I talk to them, a student says that they like this class and that’s why they go to that one, or they like that teacher. So I think a big part of that is that as a staff, we have a responsibility for that and how we can make what students are learning rel- evant and engaging, and build relationships with our kids so that they want to come to our classes.”
“The other piece is that the responsibility, that stu- dent understanding, that expectation is that when you’re here at Lincoln High, you are where you are supposed to be every period. That’s the first responsibility of a stu- dent – to be present. And I think there’s responsibility that goes both ways there,” Larson said.
Larson plans to have a group of teachers and administrators (including newly hired associate principal Ryan Escamilla) work over the summer to come up with some possible next steps.
If you have suggestions or questions, join the conversation online by answering our survey. Go to: http://news.lps.org/advocate and click on the Polls and Surveys menu.
