Good evening, Central Spartans.This is your principal, Heather Horton. It’s hard to believe, but our first quarter of the 2023-2024 school year will end this Friday, October 27. It has been a great quarter, but we are always looking for ways to improve. In analyzing discipline data, one of our biggest challenges is getting students to class on time. Our instructional time for each class period is crucial to a student's academic success and when they enter the class late it causes a disturbance and the student misses out on this instruction. Tardies for the first quarter are high not just for first period, but each class period throughout the day. Students have 6 to 7 minutes for each transition totaling over 30 minutes of the school day to move between classes and use the restroom. When students receive tardies the consequences include warnings, lunch detentions, and after school detention.
Tomorrow our students will watch a morning news video clip explaining the importance of getting to class on time and a tardy audit procedure we will utilize to encourage our students to make every effort to get to class on time. For the tardy audit we will utilize one of our new standard response protocols, the Hold. During a hold, teachers do not allow students to enter or leave the classroom. When a hold is called shortly after students should have reported to class, any students left in the hallways will make their way to the media center where administrators will briefly reinforce the importance of reporting to class on time and students will return to class within 5 to 10 minutes, however they will receive a tardy for that class period. Parents and family members, you can help us, by reinforcing the importance of getting to class on time and checking your child's tardies for each class period in PowerSchool. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to give us a call. We appreciate your support and partnership to ensure the success of all our students. Have a great night!