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Dear Holy Spirit Parents and Guardians,
It is hard to believe that we have just completed the first quarter of the 2021-2022 school year. Before we know it, the holidays will be here!
We wanted to take a minute to draw your attention to our tardy policy that is located in our Parent/Student Handbook on pages 28-29. Our policy reads the following:
TARDINESS AND EARLY WITHDRAWAL
- A student is tardy if he/she is not in the classroom by the time the tardy bell rings at 7:55 a.m. Please allow your child time to walk down the halls to be in their classrooms, in their desks.
- “Early withdrawal” is considered to be when a student is withdrawn for the day within the last thirty (30) minutes of their school day.
- When tardy, students must report to the office for an admit pass.
- Anytime a student arrives at school after 8:05, he/she must be signed in by an adult in the front office.
- Students arriving late or being picked up early is disruptive to the teacher and other students in the class. Every effort must be made to have your child present at school the entire day. Many factors can cause students to arrive late or to be withdrawn early for school, most of which are beyond control of the student. With this in mind, each student is granted 15 no-fault tardies or early withdrawals per school year.
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On the 16th and subsequent tardies, and/or early withdrawal, a $50.00 fee will be assessed for each occurrence not to exceed 100.00 per family per day.
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On the 16th tardy or early withdrawal, the student’s attendance file will be reviewed by the Attendance Review Committee and a parent conference will be required.
- The tardy/early withdrawal fees are considered financial obligations. Tardy fees will be added to a family’s FACTS account. Re-enrollment will be held until the obligations are met.
- Excessive tardiness or early withdrawals may result in the student being placed on probation, suspended, expelled and/or denied readmission for the upcoming year.
- Chronically tardy students who are determined by the Attendance Review Committee will be required to attend Saturday School at the parent’s expense of $100 for four (4) hours per student.
This is NOT a new policy to Holy Spirit Catholic School, it has been around for years. Last year however, because of COVID-19, we did not enforce the policy. Therefore, we felt it only fair to remind you all of the policy now and let you know that we have decided to waive the 135 tardies that were incurred during the 1st quarter and begin today with a clean slate going forward for everyone.
Starting with Monday, October 18, 2021, we will begin enforcing the policy for the remainder of the school year. We realize the excessive fees for tardies may seem extreme but having the policy in place has been an effective way for us to eliminating excessive tardies in the past. Ultimately we just want our students to be here on time and for them to start their day off on the right foot.
With that, please remember that we begin carline at 7:00 a.m. daily. We have very little traffic from 7:00 a.m. – 7:30 a.m. and then we move over 275 cars within 25 minutes. We kindly request that you consider leaving the house at least 10 minutes earlier to make sure you are here on time. It will likely alleviate the anxiety your children feel of the potential of being late and the frustration you feel when the carline is backed up.
Thank you for your attention to this matter and if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out.
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