The high school has gone through some new transitions within the last couple of years. This year, Principal Dr. Matthew Johnson and Vice Principal Mrs. Susan Wise along with other administrative officials decided to transition to digital passes known as “SmartPass.”
“[SmartPass] is an electronic hall pass system designed to provide real time updates.We started looking into electronic passes last year. Mr. Peipher, the head of Technology, and I reviewed features of a few different options. Mr. Peipher was looking for passes that would interface with our systems and provide the features that we were looking for. Once he narrowed down the list, we sat through demonstrations of the pass systems. We liked SmartPass because it had the features we wanted, plus some additional features, and it was created by the same company we use for attendance during drills and emergencies. We knew their customer service would be reliable,” said Wise when she was explaining the process and the idea behind why the school chose the SmartPass system.
A couple students had very similar reactions to one another when they were informed of this transition. Freshman Emerson Metzger was initially very surprised, both juniors Ruby Watts and Amelia Twigg expressed how they were tired of the district making multiple changes within a short span of years, but also could see their reasoning.
“I really did not like the decisions at first because it would be very inconvenient if you wanted to go somewhere at the beginning of the period and you would have to take your chromebook out, and it would be really inconvenient for teachers to accept a pass to go to the bathroom and they would have to stop class to accept the pass and take class time away. And now I’m starting to have a more open mind in seeing all of the pros and cons of why they did switch,” said freshman Sydney Confer when she was also explaining her initial reaction to me.
Wise explained how this idea wasn’t even proposed by administrators, it was initially an idea brought up by a few teachers.
“Teachers were frustrated with having to write a lot of passes which often interrupted class. From the administration side, it allowed us to have a better idea of where students are supposed be in the building if we have an emergency,” said Wise when explaining why the teachers were adamant about considering this digital transition.
Then both her and Johnson started doing some more research about digital passes, and approached this idea through both the lens of a teacher and an administrator, and they came to discover there would be a lot of benefit from it.
Students also had very wise opinions as to why the district may have decided to make this change.
“I believe the school decided to switch to Smart Passes because of the severe disconnect between students and their supposed location. Students whose interaction causes a disruption is going to be limited as well to prevent future conflict. Any administration would want to minimize possible disruption and chaos, and our district decided that online passes were the best way to handle it,” said Watts.
while Metzger said, “ I think that the school district decided to switch to Smart Passes because it’s a safer and more organized way of keeping track of students.”
Wise also recognized that there can be some problems/obstacles that could fall early on during this transitional phase, and she listed them out in bulleted form.
- 1. If SmartPass experiences a technical glitch, it will impact us.
- 2. Teachers and students need to get used to the pass and how to use it.
- 3. Students need to remember to charge their Chromebooks..
- 4. Trying to work around issues that did not come up in the training.
- 5. Consistency in use.
- 6. Getting substitutes into the system and trained.
- 7. Determining where we should use kiosks (Auditorium study halls, cafeteria, main office).
- 8. Having patience as we figure it out.
Students also noted both pros and cons they saw to the SmartPass.
“I think smart passes will decrease the confusion between teachers surrounding student location, and increase student consideration when deciding to travel around the school. If a student’s travel ability is more limited they will be more likely to think through and consider their pass usage. Overall, both students and staff will be held more accountable compared to the previous system of paper passes,” said Watts, while Twigg said, “They help keep better track of where students are.”
“One con that I have is that amount of time that it takes away from class. It causes the teacher to have to pause or stop class for a moment to approve the pass. Even though this could be a process that takes under a minute it could still distract other students in the class. Another con that I have is the time limit. I think five minutes is a reasonable time for certain things but for others you need more than five minutes. It’s not an issue going over the time limit as long as you have a teacher that doesn’t mind, but you shouldn’t get in trouble for running out of time,” said Metzger when explaining one con to the passes.
Confer also spoke of the cons associated with SmartPass when she said, “The inconvenience of it all, and you will get in trouble from the principals even if you go one minute over the time in the bathroom, and paper passes were more convenient, more work on the teachers part with accepting and declining passes.”
Wise is very certain that this transition will change our school for the better in the coming years once everything is settled down and everyone understands how to use these passes.
“Once everyone gets used to it, it will be easier than stopping class every few minutes to write a pass. Teachers and students will have more continuity of instruction. Teachers can send a pass to a student to come see them without having to track the student down. Students can request passes from teachers they need to see without having to ask another teacher to call and see if they can come. The teachers can approve the passes from their device or the student’s,” said Wise.
Featured photo (at top): This photo is an advertisement for SmartPass. It was provided by the website SmartPass.
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