Different teachers have different policies, like most classrooms. While some teachers may not enforce harsh rules, some teachers integrate specific rules for their students, like late policies.

Scott Becker, the AP Calculus AB and BC teacher, has a late policy in which students must have their whole entire body through the door by the time the bell stops ringing. If not, they have to roll the “Dice of Doom” with 6 sides, each with a corresponding consequence. When Becker first started teaching at GBHS 24 years ago, he adapted the system from another teacher.

“You could hear people running down the hallway and I had a kid superman dive through the door… trying to make sure his whole body was through before the bell stopped ringing,” Becker said.

Although some students are usually late only a few times, some take it so far that Becker has had to stop using the “Dice of Doom” since the policy was not working for said students. If students are habitually late, suspension has sometimes had to be used.

“You’re going to have to have a job that’s going to have rules. You don’t have to like them or agree with them… (students) make a choice whether or not to be on time or deal with the consequences,” Becker said.

Sparsh Kumar, a senior at GBHS, was in Becker’s first-period class but transferred to third-period due to being late on the second and third day of school. 

“I had to write ‘I’ll never be late’ 100 times. I was actually missing a word in each sentence so I had to write it again,” Kumar said. “It felt, I guess odd and surprising since no other class has that. I learned my lesson.”

According to Stacy Velasquez, the attendance clerk at GBHS, students have 10 minutes in the morning to get to class before the front and library gate are closed. If a student is 30 minutes or more late, the student is considered absent and unexcused until someone clears it.

Once a student reaches three tardies or more, they will have to serve detention.

“Those tardies turn into truancies and they cannot be cleared. Truancy is if you’re perpetually late and no one called to clear you… it’s multiple absences,” Velasquez said when asked about a student not serving detention. A student is considered truant after “three times (being late) without a note or call from a parent.”

Ever since the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 student tardiness has increased from the beginning of last year to this year. 

“Students come in late, oversleep, or just run late in the morning,” Velasquez said.