In the past, many students attended in-school suspension (or ISS), and for various reasons. But this year, Principal Davis changed the school’s disciplinary standards, and his efforts evidently paid off. The amount of students in the ISS room, lately, has been three to five at most, a significant decrease from that of previous years.

The reason people are sent to ISS is absences. The goal of Principal Davis is to establish an environment where students actually attend school and classes consistently. To achieve this, he has implemented a new tardy policy for absences. If in the morning, one arrives at school late, there is a new rule called “sweep”, in which the student has to attend the commons for the entire hour, doing schoolwork or reading. More importantly, the student is counted tardy for the class, and too many of those results in detention, followed by ISS. Understandably, this policy has dissuaded many students from being late to their classes, lest they get closer to a dull hour in the commons and an equally boring ISS punishment.

“Back when I was a freshman, I used to be in ISS all the time. But now, I have gotten better,” said junior, Mauricio Againeses. He isn’t the only one who’s been positively affected by these new absence rules; most of the school also seems to have taken a lesson from the revamped, stricter policies. “When I was a sophomore, I used to be late a lot. But now, since they have sweep, I have learned to be here on time,” said Lauren McClain, junior.

The discipline has changed a lot this year at Heritage, mainly as a method of making sure students can succeed, stay out of trouble, and clear those pesky absences, which has evidently resulted in less students being sent to ISS than in previous years.