Detention has a whole new look this year. As the year progresses, the administration is working to get things back to normal. This means creating and enforcing the new rules and practices.

The newest change to detention under the new administration is that students are no longer allowed to serve during BSM Hour. On top of all the other work that staff has been doing this year, serving detention during BSM Hour became just one more thing to deal with. The main issue was finding somewhere to put kids that would show up for detention and since there isn’t necessarily a supervisor for every hour, the office had to make a change. “BSM hours are too many people at too many different times, with no place,” Principal Stephanie Nitchals said.

The options for serving detentions now are during lunch, or before or after school. Having only these three options is simpler for the staff. Regardless of what many students think, there is no other reason for having only three options than making it simpler. “There is no purpose other than trying to streamline it…,” Nitchals said.

At the beginning of the school year, there was an influx of students receiving detentions. Issues arose with students getting to school on time, being ready to learn, and just simply following the rules and values that BSM upholds. There seemed to be a struggle with this at the beginning of the year because everyone was excited to be back and in person. “Students are just getting back used to being in school every day and following rules,” Nitchals said.

Detentions were up more than usual, with 255 detentions being given out just in the first quarter. This is approximately 75 more than the typical amount in the first quarter. These detentions are related to not only behavior, but also dress code and tardies. There are no more in person warnings, so will not be lining up in the Cube to talk to their dean. If students are coming close to the limit on tardies before a detention, they will get an email that will serve as your warning.

As for dress code violations, students have one chance to change and after that, it will be a detention. “We had warnings for the first couple of months but everybody knows what the dress code is now, so we are not doing warnings anymore,” Nitchals said.