Students ask end to locking out the tardy

Boston student leaders are trying to reverse a longtime tradition in many of the city's high schools: the practice of locking out tardy students.

The lockout tactic, rarely implemented elsewhere in the state, is used in a variety of ways in Boston's high schools. In some, students face a locked school door if they're 20 minutes late; in others, they're barred from entering if they're 40 minutes tardy. To enter, students must return with a parent or guardian to sign them into school. Otherwise, they are marked absent.

Principals who use the lockout policy say they're trying to force students to come to class on time, while student leaders and other principals say they think the practice deprives students of an education and causes unnecessary anguish.

Trying to get into their first-period classes, some tardy students sneak in through a side door. Others use cellphones to beg friends and sympathetic teachers to let them in. Most, however, just take the day off, say student leaders, who made their case to the School Committee last night.

''If people put the effort into getting to school, it's really senseless to lock them out," said Alafia Spencer, a senior at The Engineering School and president of the Boston Student Advisory Council.

Instead of barring students from campus, schools should give tardy students detention, community service, or extra class work, student leaders say.

If the school system keeps the lockout policy, it should make it less austere and more consistent from school to school, they said. The students recommend allowing notes or phone calls from parents to get a student in class, instead of requiring parents to show up in person, an unrealistic expectation for working parents. And, students should never be shut out when the temperature drops below freezing, they advise.

High school bells, for the most part, first ring at 7:20 a.m. Students are expected to be in homeroom or their first-period class by 7:25 a.m.

Superintendent Thomas W. Payzant said he would support the students in their efforts to come up with a new policy and asked them to collect information from all high schools on their current lockout policy.

Boston high schools have barred consistently tardy students from attending class since the 1970s, but the policy in many schools shifted in the 1990s to include first-time offenders, said Michael Fung, headmaster at Charlestown High School, who opposes locking out late students.

''Many schools just closed the door on their kids," Fung said. ''It amounts to a suspension without a hearing."

On any given day at Brighton High, 10 to 50 students are locked out of school if they arrive 45 minutes late, said Jessica Madden-Fuoco, an English teacher whose leadership class researched the topic last year.

More than 70 percent of students surveyed last year at Brighton High said they have decided not to come to school after oversleeping or missing a first bus because it would not be worth the effort, knowing they would be locked out, Madden-Fuoco said.

Toby Romer, headmaster at Brighton High, defends the policy.

''I would rather have a student miss six hours of school one day and work with their families to make sure this doesn't happen again, than have them consistently miss half an hour each day over the school year," Romer said.

But student leaders say the lockout policy also punishes students who are only late because of a one-time circumstance.

Jason Miller, a senior at The Engineering School, said he was late to school for the first time in three years last January when he was a junior at Hyde Park High. He had left the house at 6:30 a.m., but a late trolley made him miss a bus to school.

He arrived at 8 a.m. to a locked door, joining more than 10 other tardy students waiting outside in the snow, he said. He rang the bell, but an administrator and a school police officer told him he couldn't enter without a parent and had to leave or risk being arrested for trespassing.

''I was like, 'I can't go all the way home for a parent,' " Miller said. ''That's a waste of time when I could be learning."

So Miller, an honor student, stayed outside until the first period ended and sneaked into school through a rear delivery door, so he would not miss a second-period math test.

Other students use the lockout policy as an excuse to cut school, student leaders said. They arrive just a few minutes after doors close, so they could tell their parents they were locked out.

English High, which for the last three years locked out students who were 35 minutes tardy, abolished that practice this fall because it did not reduce tardiness, said Helen Jacobson, the high school's chief academic officer.

Federal education law judges schools on their daily attendance rate, along with test scores, so keeping students out does not make sense, said Michael Carr, spokesman for the National Association of Secondary School Principals. ''For the most part, principals are trying to figure out how to get those kids in," Carr said.

Tracy Jan can be reached at tjan@globe.com.