Tardiness and Attendance Issues

So the day we got back from break, one of the headmasters of our school came into my first period class and told everyone that if we improved our tardiness and attendance more than any other class, she would have something special for us! The kids were briefly excited by this. Would it be food? Or a party?!? Then they quickly started coming up with all their excuses again for why they are tardy and absent so often. I sighed.

I decided we needed to have a discussion about why it's so important to show up daily and on-time to class and how we could improve our attendance for the remainder of the term. More than anything else, our school has a very strict policy on attendance. More than three unexcused absences (and three tardies equal an absence), and you automatically fail the course. It's a very strict policy, and I'll get into my opinions about it further when I discuss assessment. So I tried to stress to them that it was not worth failing a class. But they then got pretty upset that the school has this policy. So I said that there wasn't much I could do about it at that point but that I agreed with them. However, they still have this responsibility to get to class and to not be late. So I asked them what strategies they could use to make sure they were here on time everyday. The first girl responded by saying she didn't know what to do because her child's daycare starts at 8am and school here starts at 8am, so what was she supposed to do? I was at a loss. I knew she had a child, but I didn't know that the father wasn't in the picture and that she had no one else really to help her out. (As you can see, I am constantly reminded of how naive and ignorant I am of their situations.) I had no idea how to respond. Another student said that I wouldn't understand because I don't live in "the hood," and sometimes it's not safe to go outside in the mornings. I didn't know what to say. I only could say, "I'm sorry. The school has a really strict attendance policy, and it's your responsibility to figure out how you can get to school on time everyday." I felt that this conversation was not helping. Then they began saying more ridiculous things like, "If class started at 8:10am instead, we'd all be on time." I wanted to laugh out loud. Most of my tardy students are late by 30-45 minutes on a regular basis, and half of the class doesn't even show up most days. It was a strange combination of very legitimate reasons and ridiculous excuses. So we ended class, and the same number of students were tardy the very next day. Clearly, we had a very unsuccessful talk. Suggestions?