Digital Pass System: Pros and Cons

Digital Pass System: Pros and Cons 

By Alex Lopes Winter 2023

It was around sometime last year when Brookfield High School implemented the digital pass system. School administrators say it was an important move to push the school into the future, but some students still have pushback to the decision. 

Ryder Reiling, sophomore, was one of these students. When asked when the first time he used the digital pass system, he replied “Gosh, it had to have been sometime last year when it first got instituted. I remember for the first while when it was around, I didn’t know how to use it, so I just didn’t use it, and then the teachers would get mad at me.” He then expanded on his opinions on the system, saying: “Personally I dislike it. I’ve had issues with it in the past. We should just go back to pen and paper.” When asked if perhaps the timing of the pass could have a bad effect on students, Reiling had the following to say: “I feel it can have a detrimental effect. Cause there're many students who need to relieve themselves, but them knowing it’s ticking away, and the school’s automatically notified can stress them out and cause issues. There could be health implications with stress factors increasing on the amount of time.”

I asked Mr. Reiling what he had heard from other people in the school about the pass system. He said: “a lot of teachers I have don't understand the pass system. [One of my teachers is] always struggling to use it, and usually just ends up letting us go without a pass. Many people struggle to use it, still, even though we’ve been using it for almost a year now.” As our interview neared the end, I asked if perhaps more interaction between students and administration should happen when making decisions in the future: “I feel they should have asked if they wanted it [and] I feel it was a net loss, and students are overly upset by this decision. [...] I feel like we should revert back to the paper pass system. As soon as possible.”

In order to see the pro-E-pass perspective, the principal Mr. Balanda was interviewed. My first question was, if he made the decision to make the digital pass system. He explained, “Ultimately it is me, as the principal of the building, but it did involve a lot of other people with part of the conversation.” 

He also explained some of the process and rationale leading up to creation of the new system. Saying that, “the conversation about the digital pass system really started a couple years ago during Covid when we really had to track where kids were, going to the bathroom, remember contact tracing was a big thing back then, and so, one of our teachers actually created an online excel spreadsheet. And then we eventually went back to paper passes. Some people really wanted [the digital pass system], there was some staff interested, and I wanted to find a different way, not having to use so many paper passes, and so we did a couple of presentations with this program, with a couple different electronic pass systems.” I wanted to know from Principal Balanda if there was anything specifically wrong with the paper pass system.

He explained that with the paper pass system, “There’s a couple different things that were happening, right, and no fault of anybody’s, but sometimes teachers and staff would leave blank passes sitting out, and kids would take them and get them signed.[...] It was really easy, you could pretty much write any name and just show a pass, it didn’t really have to be you. And there were kids that would have collections of passes and have ones in their bags, so as long as they had a teacher that didn’t write a date, or the time, they would just use it, and show it, and it just looks [real]. And, nobody was doing anything illegal, or nefarious, or anything like that, but it was increasing traffic and things in the hallways [so we] sometimes have problems with some kids wanting to meet up in the bathrooms, or in different locations.” 

He also explained how the new system was able to decrease the problems of the old system, stating that: “with this pass system, I have the ability to limit locations, limit passes. I’d think you’d be surprised if I could show you that data, some kids are actually using a lot of passes per day, not legitimately sometimes, sometimes just to walk, so it allows me to kind of address that. And get the hallways a little more under control, and because your student pictures are there, I can pull up my app in the hallway, and for my school of 879 kids, I know a lot of kids by face. Sometimes I know names and not faces, so it all matches and I can check that way.” 

My final question concerned the communication between students and administration when making this very important decision. I explained to Mr. Balanda how some people weren’t happy with the pass system, and if we should have more interaction between administration and students. 

He had a detailed response: “Sure, I would love that. In fact, you know I think student input is important. I think there’s a couple different ways, one is through the school climate team, [...] where students will be able to bring in issues to any students that serve on that school climate team, including general questions. [They could give] feedback about E-hallpass, and the hall pass system could get to the school climate team, and then come back to us. So I think having vehicles for students to have some say is important.” He also mentioned to me that after the new year he was planning to create a principal's advisory council, to get more ideas for programs and events. 

learly, the current pass system is not perfect, and not all students are on board with it. However the impression that I got from Mr. Balanda was that it’s here to stay. The sentiment around the pass system of the school remains divided, and there are still some serious issues with the system, like Mr. Reiling outlined. Yet, student and staff interaction is the key to solving these issues, and thanks to student and staff input, we can make the current pass system much better for everyone in the school.