South Side Begins New School Year with Tardy Sweeps to Tackle Attendance

By: Alice Kauffman (10)
alice.kauffman@fwcsstudents.org

September 15, 2023

This year, South Side High School has reopened an opportunity that they had focused on last year as well. Tardy Sweeps are something that Fort Wayne Community Schools has been instilling on and off. Once the bell rings, an announcement comes on telling teachers that they’re conducting a Tardy Sweep. From here, school staff members go through halls and collect students who weren’t in class on time.

“We started it at the beginning of second semester last year and we did it for a couple of weeks, and then we kind of stopped doing it. Tardies became more of an issue, but we didn't finish the year doing it,” said Assistant Principal Kyle Emenhiser.

Emenhiser explained that once staff realizes tardies are becoming an issue, then they know there’s a problem to be fixed. They implement sweeps depending on how well kids are doing getting to class, which is why it doesn’t necessarily happen all year round. Currently, students can plan on having around one Tardy Sweep a day.

“We had like 10-12 kids last year, this year we’ve had some groups that are 60-70 kids- more than what we want obviously, but once students get to the point of having more than one they serve detention the next week,” said Emenhiser.

The idea is that once students experience staying after school for 45 minutes, they’ll realize that getting to class on time is worth it. They use these tactics to help students that are consistently late to classes, but it has other benefits aside from attendance. 

Peacemakers are students around the school working against conflict and non-violence. This year, they have realized that the sweeps eliminate space and time for students to have fights and arguments in hallways and Commons.

“It gets the point across, it makes students get to class faster. It limits the possibility of there being a fight, because less people are surrounding a space. People are more focused on getting to class than they are fighting,” said Jeremiah Gibson (11).

This is a new, and common perspective from several students. Without as much time to roam the halls, and more incentive to be in class, there isn’t much availability to fight or cause conflict. This encourages people to stay friendly and safe.

Certain students had a different view of the sweeps. While it’s nice that classmates are being held accountable, it sometimes creates stress in the classroom.

“They’re a liability to the school because it’s taking away from the class time of the kids who are in the class and who aren’t. Class has to be restarted, or it can't start on time because of them,” said Claire Stoller (10).

Having disruptions with kids going into class late can hurt the learning time, and cause others to be off task. This can also happen with Tardy Sweeps. Students get more talkative in classes once the chaos of a sweep ensues. There is a lot of knocking, usually when there’s several kids who don’t get into their class on time.

“If a student is late to class, it's sometimes not because they were trying to be late. Sometimes they get stopped in the hallway by a teacher, or there’s a fight in front of them and they can't get past it. Also, if they didn’t want to be in class, they would choose not to be in class, but the people who get swept up on accident can't be,” said Stoller.

Many agreed to this point, including a few students who got swept up by accident going from one class to another, with an excuse. Everyone’s opinions are different on this topic, but there is no perfect way to go about changing attendance. Teachers are confident that Tardy Sweeps will start helping each student to get to class on time, and understand the importance. The best way to avoid being in a sweep each period, and dodge detentions, is to arrive in class before the bell rings, which sweeps are showing that everyone is adjusting to this year.

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