The second quarter has begun, and HQ has moved… again.
The most prominent reason HQ moved was to encourage students and families to make it to school on time. “There’s a sense of urgency to be somewhere…on time, because that’s what life is going to expect,” Mr. Mazzi, interim superintendent, explains. “Versus ‘Ah, it’s just HQ.’”
Harding suffered from high attendance problems in the morning, with a line from the office out the front door for late passes. Mazzi describes visiting Harding in the mornings and seeing the massive amount of students arriving late; he knew it was a problem in need of a solution. For Musbach, who’s only worked in academics for MCS, it was helpful to have a fresh set of eyes to see something and say, “Oh that’s a problem,” she remarks.
But it’s not only the need for higher attendance, it’s also that teachers need a longer amount of time to track it. When the first period of the day was only 15 minutes long, sometimes teachers couldn’t finish marking student attendance before the bell rang. This made it difficult for the office team at Harding to know where students were, when they got to school, and how many students were
actually at school. With a 45-minute period to start the day, a teacher can wait for all their students to show up to school before taking attendance.
The main question people ask is “Why?” Students at Harding have never known anything different than what the schedule was like before, so it comes as a surprise that HQ is after 1st period. But HQ wasn’t always the first class of the day. “HQ…has kind of been everywhere,” Ms. Musbach states.
A long time ago, HQ was the last period of the day, called Academic Assistance. Students who needed extra tutoring could get help from their teachers, and kids who didn’t need help went home early. “It was crazy,” Musbach admits. There was another point where HQ was an extension of 1st period.
Musbach also notes that in the making of the decision to move HQ, the office and administration team spoke with the student council about ideas to make HQ more purposeful. She says that these ideas could be used at Harding in the future.
One last thing to note is that this isn’t just one more rule to control students, it’s Harding’s attempt to help get kids to school on time. Administration is looking to fix the rock-bottom attendance rating from a few years ago－Marion City Schools had the lowest in the state－and HQ after first period is one of the things they’re trying. After all, our motto is, “Inspiring a community of achievement.”