Editoral 9/25/2007 - Get ye to the class on time...

What? Get to school on time? How dast Santa Fe High School’s new principal demand such a thing?

How not? as we might translate literally from Spanish. Teachers, of whom so much is increasingly expected, should be able to launch a lesson without kids dragging in after the bell, bringing giggles and smart remarks from those already assembled. And it’s all the worse when the little darlings slink in serially, so Teech has to start over and over again, lest he or she be accused of shortchanging the tardy ones.

To be sure, Santa Fe, Capital and other public high schools have more serious problems: Lots of teens simply don’t show up at all. Against that ongoing challenge, teachers and administrators have worked on ways of making moms and dads share responsibility for enforcing truancy rules.

Now Principal Daniel Webb is bringing parents into the school’s efforts against tardiness. Last week, laggards’ parents were called to the principal’s office.

Oh, the embarrassment; the inconvenience; the human-rights burdens. The swell of violin music by now will have moved you to tears ...

It isn’t just a matter of making it to their first-period classes on time — which all too many of the youngsters don’t; it’s also the time they take getting from one class to another.

School rules say five minutes. That doesn’t leave many seconds for shooting the breeze with classmates, which should be the stuff of lunchtimes, or before and after school. So certain insouciant types just chat away, then amble into class when they darn well feel like it.

How much such attitudes have to do with the academic mediocrity of New Mexico schools is hard to tell — but you can’t blame the principal for trying to instill a little basic responsibility.

Webb, who came here from Los Lunas, doesn’t figure his on-time demand is unreasonable. He realizes that the Demon campus is a big one, so he’s already asked the faculty to cut a couple of minutes’ slack on students who have to hoof it from one end to another.

But even a seven-minute “pass period” is cutting things a bit thin, as The New Mexican’s intrepid John Sena discovered in the course of reporting on the stir over the new rules — or on their overdue enforcement: Sena’s in great shape — but it took him 7 minutes, 22 seconds to stride from the far end of south campus to a classroom in the main building.

And of course that doesn’t allow for a drink of water or a restroom stop. But that itinerary was an extreme one; Webb says it’s time to schedule blocks of classes in the same part of campus — which he hopes will be accomplished by next fall at the latest. That won’t be easy.

For now, perhaps, he could add a minute or two for the cross-campus trek — but we applaud what he’s told SFHS’s teachers: Feel free to lock the door at the start of class, and let Johnny- or Janie-come-lately face the ignominy of the principal’s-office process.

For teachers tired of tardiness, Webb’s words are a breath of fresh air; for students accustomed to slouching their way into classrooms, it’s tyranny — or somethin’ like that ... grumble, grumble ...

Life is tough, as some of those students have long known, and others might find out one of these days. Getting to class on time is good preparation for making things that much less difficult. It’s also an exercise in courtesy; in respect for the rest of society; in discipline, and in efficiency.

None of that might have mattered to the who-cares crowd Daniel Webb herded through his office last week. But maybe it will now.