For more specific instructions on how to use our signout app, Orah,
click on "Students" or "Families" at the top of this page to find your relevant instructions.
The platform we previously used for electronic sign-out, LiveSafe, worked on a really simple level for our needs: a student is leaving campus, they submit a tip in LiveSafe. It isn't connected to our Student Travel Permission Form for when students are leaving campus with a non-guardian and missing curfew, traveling more than 30 miles away from campus, or staying off-campus overnight. We also have to document those departures that will miss curfew check in a separate duty log, which can sometimes lead to students 'missing' at check when they had actually signed out because they didn't make it to that duty log. It's also not designed for students to sign back in easily, requiring a second tip or responding in the chat of their first tip and saying that they're returned. There isn't a way to instantly see who all is still signed out in LiveSafe.
Orah provides several benefits to students, families, and staff members:
Students can submit a "pass" to leave campus overnight, to miss curfew, or to travel more than 30 miles in advance, similar to the Student Travel Permission Form we currently use. Their guardian(s) will get an email notification that the pass has been created, gives them all of the travel details and asks them to approve or to reject the request. (Students will do this pass even when it's a guardian picking them up. In that case, it will automatically be marked as approved/endorsed by a guardian and they won't receive an email notification for it.)
We will no longer call families to confirm those travel requests, relying on them to approve or to reject the request via that email notification instead. It's very important that families limit access to their school email accounts, to avoid students being tempted to approve their own requests.
Students will still need to check out at the CC office when they are traveling more than 30 miles, missing curfew, and staying off-campus overnight, and the CC on duty will activate the pass that the student submitted to sign them out. This will update our Orah dashboard, instead of relying on the CCs on duty to re-document all of the sign-out details accurately on a duty log. (If a student and family have signed out correctly with a CC and later received a phone call after check confirming that the student is it home, it's because of a mistake we've made at this step, which hopefully won't happen ever again when we switch to Orah.)
Employees will have a more accurate roster of which students have signed out to miss curfew or to be gone overnight, helping curfew check run more smoothly. Orah will also save administrative time as we cut out the phone call to guardians to confirm the students' travel plans.
For everyone, in emergency situations, like a lockdown or fire drill, we could use Orah to start a safety check. This would alert every student on campus or in a particular building/hall and ask them to confirm their safety and/or location, greatly speeding up our incident management/response.
We are only looking at Orah for its passes (sign-in/sign-out) and roll call (curfew check) features. We are not currently looking at any additional features, like wellbeing notes, surveys, attendance, or mood checks; we do those tasks through other platforms. If we decide to go with Orah for the next school year, we would look into which of those products might be helpful.
There is a location feature in Orah that some campuses use that asks students to sign in to each building or space as they move about campus, by swiping their phone across NFC tiles that have been installed, to get a more accurate accounting of which students are where at any given time or to see how often spaces/services are being used. It does not track students via their phones' location with geofencing or anything like that. There is a location tracking update coming to Orah, but we may not use that feature when it becomes available.