Recently, a high school in Utah has started charging students money for being late to school. They start out with a warning for your first offense, $3 for the second and $5 every time after that. I think there’s some pros and cons with this new way of punishment.
To start off with the cons, it’s obviously unfair to some students. Not every kid in high school has a minimum wage job and makes their own income to pay for things like that. If they don’t have jobs, then the school is basically asking parents to fork up their money to pay for their kid’s attendance. Also, when a high school student is late, who does not yet drive themselves to school then it may not even be their own faults for being late. Adults can wake up late too, right? Or maybe your parent/ride to school is sick and you suddenly need a plan B on getting there. Being late to school can sometimes be caused by outside forces like this, so making a kid pay for their tardiness when they don’t take into account what happened certainly isn’t fair.
As for the pros, there are a few. Telling kids that they have to pay for being late is a threat to their wallets because they’d rather spend their money on food or going out with friends. This is a no brainer. In fact, the school said so far there’s been almost no tardies since the rule was implemented. Also, being on time to school for kids who are used to tardies can be grade changing. High school is a critical time to realize you need to be mature, and that includes not being late, so this rule would probably benefit many schools in the United States.