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Lockout
As everyone is probably aware, Dixon High’s administration has ordered random lockouts throughout the school year. In case you haven’t heard of lockouts, a lockout is an event where all of the teachers lock their classroom doors when the tardy bell rings. Students who are tardy to class get a pass from the office in order to enter class and receive a thirty minute lunch detention. If you miss the lunch detention, then you have to go to Saturday school and if you miss that, the consequences just become more serious. As for the numbers, on September 8, 2010, 191 students were locked out of class and on September 9, 2010, 52 students were locked out of class. As you can see the second day had significantly less students that were late as compared to the first day. In an interview with Mr. Chaidez, he guarantees that this number will drop to 30 or less by the next lockout.
When talking to our principal, he makes it clear that he does not like lockouts and that he wishes they were not necessary. However, he says they are important to have since the number of tardy students has gotten out of hand. There is also the argument that when a student is late to class, he or she interrupts the class and distracts the students from learning. Learning is (however redundant this may sound) very important to our school and distractions must be kept to a minimum.
There are beliefs that there was going to be a lockout every day until the number of students that were tardy dropped to a reasonable amount. However, it has been observed that there was not a lockout on September 10, 2010. A few reasons for this could be that the administration office believes that the number has already reached a reasonable amount, they don’t want students to know when there’s a lockout so that they will have to be on time every day, or they just forgot. Out of all of these options, though, I would doubt that they forgot about the lockout that they scheduled, instead they might just be trying to throw students off guard to hold them accountable all of the time, not just when they know there’s a lockout. Also, it is very possible that there was never supposed to be a lockout everyday, it could just be a rumor.
Mr. Chaidez compares being late for class to being late for work because our school is preparing you for life after high school. Let’s say you have a job working for any company, the specifics don’t matter since this rule should apply anywhere. If you are late for work once or twice, your boss might excuse it. However, if you are late three or four times, now it’s a problem and your boss sees you as uncommitted and unreliable and will probably result in you being fired. This is the harsh reality that people face in the world outside of high school and it is one that we will all be exposed to sooner or later.
The administration observes that students must be held accountable for their actions to be prepared for life after high school. The numbers from just two lockouts show a significant improvement, and it maintains the point that when students are held accountable, they will respond. No matter how you feel about these events, if there wasn’t a problem with students being late for class, then there wouldn’t need to be lockouts. Of course there will always be students who are late to class, but this is a step to ensure that that number is kept in check.