Combatting tardiness: South Coast schools use data, relationships to increase student attendance

For Wareham High School students, the sight of Principal Scott Palladino standing in the parking lot in the morning is a common sight. He bears a sign encouraging students to “Beat the Bell” as they stream in on their way to their classrooms.

t’s one part of the school’s strategy for ensuring students are in their seats and ready to learn when the bell rings at 7:40 a.m. sharp. 

High schoolers show up to school late for many reasons. Some can’t resist an early-morning coffee stop while some stay awake too late on their phone and don’t wake up in time. Others struggle with serious mental health issues or complicated family lives that make timeliness difficult.

Area public schools have taken different approaches to solving the problem, from a new attendance tracking system at Wareham High School to a mix of strict rules and one-on-one support at Upper Cape Cod Regional Technical High School, to try to get students in their seats by the time the first bell rings. 

School leaders around the South Coast all trace today’s tardiness habits back to the pandemic. Absenteeism spiked during the COVID-19 pandemic and, for many schools, it still hasn’t returned to 2010s levels. 

Upper Cape Principal Josh Greeley said online education and more lenient rules led families and teachers to believe school is “not essential,” and the effects have lingered.

Many area schools stopped tracking tardies during the pandemic, often because of the difficulties managing remote classes. While attendance was tracked, most schools found it difficult to keep track of students logging into class late.

Tardiness data has become a crucial metric for teachers and principals, but varying definitions still means it’s not tracked statewide. However, tardiness across the South Coast has surged in recent years, according to records from local high schools.

Wareham Week’s sister paper Sippican Week collaborated with The New Bedford Light to understand how schools have used this data to address chronic absenteeism and tardiness since the pandemic.

Coming to school late sometimes is an early warning sign of a student’s disengagement, or maybe that they’re dealing with challenges outside of school. For classes in the early morning, tardiness can have the same effect on student learning as being absent. 

At Wareham High School, reviewing tardy data at weekly meetings has helped confront the problem.

Shortly after the pandemic, Wareham switched to E-Hall Pass, an online system that has “given us a great platform to be able to track students and hold them accountable,” Principal Scott Palladino said. He and his staff then meet with students to determine the cause of their tardiness. 

At schools like Wareham High School, tracking strategies have changed in the past five years. Last year, the school began to differentiate between a student arriving late to school and arriving late to an individual class. Previously, all of these tardies were reported as a total sum. 

This allows Principal Scott Palladino and his team to see whether kids are tardy because they are talking to friends in the hallway, or are struggling to get to the building before the first bell rings. 

Because tracking tardiness requires context, it’s hard to compare from one school to another. But for teachers and administrators, staying on top of tardiness figures has been a key to understanding the behavior patterns of students in their own buildings. 

Meanwhile, vocational schools have seen some of the lowest rates of absenteeism and tardiness — but they’re still not immune.

At Upper Cape, building connections with students and parents has been key to reducing tardiness each year. 

Members of the school’s Student Council said their peers who are often tardy are the ones who aren’t connected to the school. Councilors said strong friendships, relationships with teachers, and involvement in extracurricular activities motivated them to show up on time. They said their peers who come to school late, if at all, tend to lack those connections.

Junior Penelope Heaslip said her teachers make her feel “supported at the school, even on my bad days.” Fellow junior Bria Pavlisko said she stays busy after class and “knowing that I have something after school to look forward to” helps keep her motivated.

Senior Ally Webb said classmates who aren’t involved in a club or sport are more likely to be tardy. “The kids that are really invested in the school and their commitments often are the ones that show up just because they have a reason to be here,” Webb said. 

Other reasons council members gave for their peers’ tardiness include missing the bus and struggling to find alternative transportation, poor sleep habits that make it hard to wake up in the morning, and mental health struggles. Ivy Mesple, a junior, said she’s noticed how the seasons affect her timeliness, and she finds it harder to get up early during the winter. 

Every week, a group of the school’s administrators, teachers and counselors meet to discuss attendance and tardiness data and look to identify why students arrive late.

Bad sleep habits, transportation concerns and family issues are among some of the more common reasons students show up after the first bell. Upper Cape Superintendent Roger Forget said some students who drive are also late because they stop for Dunkin on the way to class. 

The school’s approach to reducing tardiness is two-pronged — a blend of punitive and supportive measures. 

“Having a personal relationship and good communication with parents and students goes a long way,” Greeley said. “We really have boots on the ground with our students.”

This examination of tardiness at schools serving Wareham students is part of a larger collaboration with the New Bedford Light. The full collaboration is a two-part online series that explores the challenges local schools face in tracking and reducing tardiness, and what solutions are addressing the problem. To read part one, click here and for part two click here.