HHS New Policies: Admin Rationale

Cover photo from Pexels by Andrea Piacquadio

Disha Deepak and Derek Zhang

Earlier this school year, Charger Press released the first article of a series: HHS New Policies: Analyzing Early Opinions. We wrote the article in order to shed light upon the new policies for the 2024-2025 year, including quotes from students and teachers alike to share different perspectives on the matter. Over 500 students and 50 teachers were surveyed and asked about their favorability on each policy and any other commentary they wished to share. Be sure to check out the article to gauge other students’ (and teachers’) initial thoughts on the matter!

In this article, the second of the series, we present to you an interview with our newly welcomed principal, Mr. Bauer, who shares with us the rationale and thinking behind each decision. Our goal is to further increase understanding on the implementation of the changes—especially for the student body—as one key detail from the previous article was the overwhelming difference between student views and teacher views: Students were a lot more critical while teachers were largely in support. As such, this article has been similarly formatted section-wise to the aforementioned HHS New Policies: Analyzing Early Opinions. If students gain a better understanding of the why behind these changes, they may begin to consider the long-term growth these policies have the potential for. After all, new changes are—almost always—never fully perfected from the start, but it is still important to stay open to the lasting future they could bring.

Note: Although most of the content in this article come directly from quotes in our interview with Mr. Bauer or are paraphrased versions, the writers have included small amounts of commentary.

The Need For Changes

When anyone assumes the head position of an organization—in our case, the school—the past leaders’ actions will continue to leave an impression on the members. Here at Hamilton, many students noticed the drastic difference between the past and current administration, perhaps playing a part in the extremity of their initial opinions.

Part of the reason for the changes this year were to “find ways to motivate [students] and bring them up,” Bauer said. And although some students are “anticipating negatives because [they] might just want to be left alone,” it is “[his] job to help [them] reach their potential,” and he’s not okay with students “being lost in the clamor.” Bauer has stated this once already in a few of the class meetings earlier this year: He doesn’t just want to make Hamilton a little better; he wants to make Hamilton the best there is.

This first starts with deciding what changes need to be made. The new administration held comparison reports regarding Waukesha County high schools that highlighted the need for improvements in certain areas; they also worked with pre-existing staff to make decisions that would address the root of the problems. As a result, things like excused and unexcused absences in the attendance record have gone down over 20% during the months of September & October from the last school year to this school year, showing an increase in student participation during school hours. Much of the effort carried out has been with the support of both teachers and admin, and many ideas implemented this year are still in progress: meetings with established leadership staff members from each department, meetings with a new student advisory council, and enrichment sessions for students.

Other changes that have been implemented are the removal of after-school detentions, staying within the classroom in the first/last 10 minutes, the shift from paper to electronic passes, and administration visibility—all of which will be covered in more detail in the later sections. Notice that out of every policy introduced this year, these are the only direct changes. Technology, dress code, and attendance policies were simply the enforcement of already-established rules. Keeping general procedures the same as last year for most things was something Bauer kept in mind as he thought about ways to improve the school: “[I] don’t want to come in and change everything as the principal of a building [because I] don’t want to alienate people.”

With all this being said, let’s dive into each of the policies specifically to take a look at what exactly led to the various alterations for this year.

Policy 1: Phone Caddies

We begin with possibly the most well-known enforcement: the phone caddy policy. Bauer stated that at the end of the day, “[i]t is an impossible task for teachers to monitor cell phones without there being some sort of a system in place.” As such, the mandated policy—which requires all classrooms to keep phones in caddies—has done its job in reducing teachers’ difficulties with rule enforcement. In the first article, teachers expressed struggles about having different caddy-related rules in each classroom: Different teachers’ preferences regarding caddies caused inconsistencies in caddy rules/enforcement. To answer this issue, the change serves as a “blanket policy that is there for the purpose of eliminating or minimizing the distraction that is cell phones and their addictiveness.” For more information on the effects of phones, Bauer recommends The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt, which covers how technology has changed the way newer generations have grown up.

Some students in our initial survey even mentioned safety concerns with the inability to access their phones. Considering the recent rise of school shootings, students stated they felt safer when allowed access to their phones. On this topic of safety, Bauer said, “If your phone is in the caddy, it’s right there in the classroom,” adding that “if there was really a dire issue like that, no teacher is going to stop kids from grabbing their phones.” 

Additionally, he spoke to us about other schools in Wisconsin holding stricter stances, such as keeping phones in lockers or banning phones from the campus entirely. This was not considered for HHS because Bauer, as a parent of high school students himself, considered the same safety concerns that students brought up and believes that having phones completely inaccessible could prove detrimental to student safety. Still, it is to be known that “WI State Rep[resentative] Joel Kitchens, R-Sturgeon Bay, proposed a bill that would ban cell phone use in classrooms and restrict the use of other technology,” so this reality could very well be in the near future.

Policy 2: Music Prohibition

One of the controversial policies established this year was the prohibition of music through earbuds, headphones, airpods, and other speaker devices. 

A populator result on the student survey from the original article was students speaking on how music would help them focus. When asked, Bauer stated, “They [music] are distractions. There’s not a lot of research that supports [it] actually being beneficial.” He reported that many students have reached out to him personally, stating that music helps them to focus, but after extensive research, he replied saying, “The only data to support that music helps with focus is if it doesn’t have words in the music and if it [has] a specific pace to it… you’re essentially talking classical music.” Music was also found to help some students destress after a busy day, and to this, Bauer responded saying, ”Between 2:25 pm and when you come back the next morning, I would encourage everyone to destress.” 

Bauer then circled back to the safety concerns mentioned before, saying, “I would argue there is more danger with having your airpods in and your headphones on, and you can’t hear what’s going [on] around you.” 

The use of earbuds of any style has also reduced positive interactions in Bauer’s experience. He recalled personal anecdotes of social interactions being decreased when students are otherwise engaged in the music they’re hearing. This is reminiscent of staff responses during our initial article where they mentioned the frustrations and difficulties of trying to connect with students who were using music to tune out teachers. 

This policy was later amended—as many know—to add an exception to the AP Focus block, which will be expanded upon in Policy 7.

Policy 3: Phone Access During Hall/Bathroom Breaks

For hallway and bathroom breaks, Bauer stated that phones are “communication tools, and unfortunately, they don’t always get used for positive communication.” Due to these reasons, he claimed that “not taking phones with you [during breaks] is definitely a purposeful part of the policy.”

In addition, students—once again—brought up safety concerns in the first article and also mentioned that having their phones with them would help them calm down. Bauer acknowledges that students “may feel more safe, secure, and comfortable when their cell phone is with them,” but he also finds “little to no evidence/research … that having their cell phone with them results in students actually being more safe, secure, and comfortable.” Moreover, “[t]he two most direct, noticeable benefits … are [that] students feel less inclined to leave class … and, consequently, there is less unnecessary hallway traffic” as Bauer points out.

Policy 4: First/Last 10 Minutes

As an all-encompassing policy, students have now been required to remain in the classroom during the first/last 10 minutes of the period. The belief is that the beginning and end of class are the most important as teachers get to properly introduce students to the goals for the day and then provide an appropriate closure, preparing students for the next day. Although the policy currently affects the first/last 10 min of class, alternative time ranges are up for consideration. For now, the travel-restricted period simply gets everyone used to the schedule and as a natural byproduct, clears the halls after passing time. 

Students, however, have expressed the difficulty in finding enough time to use the restroom—the girls especially. Still, Bauer holds true to the belief that “seven minutes is a lot of time to go … [and he] would encourage them to use the 63 minutes in between class.”

Policy 5: Electronic Passes

The removal of paper passes was done with good reason, and its effect has already been seen, albeit, perhaps not by the student body. In previous years, the “administrative assistants spent hours writing out passes” and managing the traffic of paper passes. This was an inefficient use of their time and so the transition over to electronic passes was made.

To clear up any confusion regarding this policy, Bauer stated that the current staff understanding is that “students should only use a red pass if they don’t have a human at their destination.” For instance, if a student needed a pass to the IMC, they would not utilize the red hallway pass and would require an email/calendar invite instead. 

Utilizing technology allowed the process to become much smoother and helped with accountability, but even then, it had some drawbacks as well. Teachers have expressed frustration in the tediousness of organizing electronic passes for simple tasks like going to Student Services, the IMC, and the healthroom. Bauer simply responded that it “will take some [time] getting used to.” Alongside this, the “biggest challenge is getting used to sending emails or creating calendar invites,” which have seen greater emphasis recently in order to promote organization and communication. 

On the student side, there was frustration with having to now carry around chromebooks as passes when the paper ones worked fine, and Bauer agreed that “it may be slightly inconvenient compared to a paper pass.” However, he urges students to consider the benefits: “[T]hink of all the paper we are saving and how much less garbage we are generating!”

There has also, of course, been the benefit of reduced paper waste, but for everything else mentioned, it appears to simply be a matter of time.

Policy 6: >15 Minutes Late Results In Absence

On a separate note, the implementation of a tardy of more than 15 minutes resulting in an absence was done to prevent students from abusing the previous attendance policy (by missing a majority of class but still being marked as only tardy). Theoretically, students could miss 70 minutes of class, show up for just the last 13 minutes, and only be marked tardy. This being said, there was no set reason for 15 minutes being the benchmark.

Bauer mentioned that the “goal is to not make a ton of exceptions” to this rule, and when asked about weather issues, he said that the determining factor was the timing (i.e. suddenness) of conditions. For example, the policy was exempt on one occasion earlier in the school year due to a very hazardous combination of blizzard and fog—only because it hit all of a sudden, with no warnings the day before. For similar future incidents, Bauer encourages students to plan ahead and prepare earlier when inclement weather is expected.

Students had more concerns, however: How can you be there for 80% of the class and still be marked absent? (This could happen if a student arrived, say, 16 minutes late.) Bauer’s response was, “[It’s] part of the learning process—sometimes decisions come with natural and unexpected consequences.” Still, it’s just as ridiculous to consider that the old policy went to just about the same extremity vice versa. Reforms clearly needed to be made on the attendance policy, potentially with more to come.

An important thing to note is that although students are marked absent, the time they are here for still counts, so deciding to simply skip if you are already more than 15 minutes late isn’t encouraged as it could result in truancy. Bauer added that he would advise students to “make good decisions and do their best to be on time” and encourages them to attend class even if it’s past the 15 minute mark. 

Policy 7: Changes Being Applied In Advisement & Focus

Although frequently used as a study hall, advisements are a “multi-tier support system,” where students can complete make-ups, meet with clubs, and go to specific teachers for extra support. Even more, advisements are still considered as instructional time by the Department of Public Instruction (DPI). As such, many of the previously mentioned policies (e.g. no music, no phones, caddy usage, 10-minute travel limitation, >15 minute attendance policy) still apply. Many students opposed this policy, but Bauer mentioned that there were not enough reasons to conclude that the negatives outweighed the potential benefits, adding that “making exceptions is not in the interest of the whole.” The same reasoning above applies to Focus blocks.

However, the music policy was eventually redacted for Focus students as previously mentioned. When asked about the motivations for this change, Bauer mentioned that a couple of students reached out to him expressing concerns about the productivity of Focus without music or headphones allowed. They discussed how AP Focus encourages students to “work together in small groups,” and students who are not participating in the group work were “having a hard time thinking over the noise of the light conversations in the room.” Bauer took this conversation under consideration and mentioned discussing the topic with multiple others before concluding this to be legitimate proof for an exception, saying, “I think that was a fair compromise in that situation.” 

Policy 8: Removal Of After-School Detentions

In the initial survey sent out for the first article, this policy had the largest majority of students with neutral opinions, leaving many to wonder why this change came to be and how removal of after-school detentions (ASD) would be replaced going forward. A particular point that led to this policy’s implementation was the lack of motivation—both on the students’ and teachers’ behalf. Bauer didn’t “think they [ASD] were impactful for students—don’t get to the root cause and were purely punitive,” particularly because “a lot of students didn’t go, and nothing came from it.” He also mentioned that “nobody wants to staff them” since “administrative assistants had to waste their time waiting for students to serve detentions that never happened.” In addition to removing ASDs, the plan going forward is to also have no more lunch detentions.

Adjusting to the stated issues, Bauer shared that “the goal is to customize the consequence to the offense, so [detention replacements] vary.” A few examples are a loss of phone privilege, revocation of parking passes (with no refund, which students signed an agreement with), or penalty box on GoGuardian. Administration hopes to find the root cause of an issue and decide the consequences accordingly. If the punishment consists of in-person time, students would be asked to come in when the staff are available, which could include days that the whole of the student body is not required to be at school. 

Policy 9: Administration & Staff Visibility

There has been a push this year from the administration to promote visibility and interactions with the student body. Bauer claims the emphasis behind this includes “looking for opportunities to share gratitude and give thanks where deserved.” Despite rumors, he doesn’t want to be seen as scary or a robot, and his goal is to be able to interact with the students of HHS to build connections as “the plan is not to keep admin acting as hall police.” Through this, he has already spoken with students—some of who shared their thoughts on the policies: One student brought up the fact that if we want to use caddies this year and still account for the previously mentioned safety concerns, we should move caddies farther away from doors/windows—a change that was later implemented. Interactions like these allow Bauer to consider a wider array of perspectives, representing the goals Bauer has in his pursuit of connectivity.

Unfortunately, students shared in the first article that the heightened administration visibility has caused discomfort. Bauer wants to know more about why that’s uncomfortable, since it was certainly not the intent. He simply wants the best for students, but acknowledges that because of the current connection between the student body and administration, the staff sometimes are seen as the antagonists. However, he reaffirms that this is not what administration is trying to be, and they really care about helping people.

It is for this same mission that teachers have been encouraged to be at classroom doors before class starts, greeting students that enter. Bauer has affirmed that this “address[es] students’ social & emotional needs while reducing barriers to learning [and] encouraging active participation & better classroom behavior.” He also mentioned studies showing an increase in “engagement by over 20% & [a decrease in] disruptive behavior by about 9%” as a result.

Policy 10: Enforcement Of Dress Code

Previously, it was mentioned that some changes were simply enforcements of already-established rules. The dress code, as one might guess, is one of them. Unlike the other policies, there weren’t any new reasons that made the administration focus on this policy. The dress code has already existed—primarily for security—since it is important to be able to identify the people in the school easily. Hats, coats, and backpacks aren’t allowed due to these safety reasons in identifying students and what they may be carrying. Bauer did make a distinction between a light coat and winter jacket, however, and he trusts students to be able to make that distinction as well.

The student dress code can apply to school activities outside of the school day as well. A while back, there was a football game with the theme being ‘Jailbreak.’ This was then changed by the staff, leading to many students becoming aggravated at them for ‘taking the fun out.’ The reason for this repeal—as Bauer shared—was because the administration didn’t think “making fun of or glorifying [inmates] was appropriate.” The consensus was reached by various adults who did not think the theme was “a good look for our community nor does it prompt the character/citizenship that we [HHS] want to promote.”

Miscellaneous

One of the most noteworthy changes this year was the use of the new advisement scheduling system: Securly Flex. This especially has taken some time to get used to and work with—on the student side and administrative side. It was implemented based on past feedback, but despite this, Flex has “been a struggle. The product has not lived up to expectations, but we [administration] have been working with them, and there will be more to come,” stated Bauer. One of the proposed changes is making it so that home advisement is NOT the catch-all that it is currently; instead, the idea is that students who haven’t selected an advisement would be randomly distributed into one of their current classes depending on which one has room left. All in all, the ultimate goal of Flex was, as its name suggests, to be flexible—but again, that feature is currently limited until administration sorts it out with Flex’s developers.

On a related note, Bauer acknowledges that losing commons privileges during advisement was a sore point for upperclassmen.  “The disappointment for upperclassmen is commons, but that became a free-for-all in [his] understanding, which is not in alignment of HHS values.” He recognizes that downtime is valuable, but didn’t feel that commons fit the environment being promoted in advisement. 

Conclusion

To quantify—less than five entirely new policies were added this year, but the increased enforcement of many standard policies caught many students off guard. To students who are frustrated with the new changes or perhaps feel overwhelmed by the overload of changes, Bauer told us that administrators “don’t want people to be frustrated” and that it’s “all in the best interest of students.” He acknowledged that some of the policies could have been better communicated or told to students in advance, saying that he “owns the fact that it’s challenging to communicate everything all the time.” Although most policies were included in the student handbook, he understands that few students tend to actually read it. 

As a principal new to Hamilton, Bauer—along with the administrative team and staff—“had to make tough decisions about what should be addressed immediately and what should wait,” but he strives to be “open and transparent about things.” He added that he’s “always willing to hear people out” but requests that “students do it in a respectful way.” All emails, voicemails, and observations he hears are taken into account, and a “majority of the feedback heard has been with good intentions.” 

As for Bauer’s personal observations, he believes that the school environment has been improving. He’s noted “students cleaning up after themselves more” in the cafeteria or at games and also helping clean up after others. At the end of the day, Bauer cares about Hamilton being a competitive force and wants us to be the best, believing that “nothing is as important as the type of people we are.”

Overall, Bauer told us that Hamilton was one of the very few places he would have even considered leaving his job for, saying that “the potential of this building and community is even higher than [he] anticipated.” He hopes that all students and staff are satisfied with the school and have positive things to say. Most importantly, Bauer wants everyone “to be as proud to be a part of Hamilton as I am.”