Picture this: it’s your first day back at school after a relaxing summer break. You’re in your fifth-period class and must go to the restroom. You raise your hand and tell your teacher and they tell you to set up a digital pass. A digital pass? You had heard rumors of a new pass system spreading around the building, but it didn’t hit you until now. The yellow paper passes you had become so accustomed to up and disappeared. How do you feel about this? How do your teachers feel about it? How does the whole school feel about it? 

When you have to use the restroom, go to another teacher’s room, go to the library, or go to the cafeteria, a digital pass is what will be used. With CHS’s new pass system, students can now use their phones or Chromebooks to fill out a digital pass and get to where they need to go. To some, this new pass system makes the pass part of the school day easier, while to others it is just an inconvenience. We interviewed students, teachers, and administrators to get their perspectives on this new system and some of their responses made us want to dig deeper. Is this digital pass system good for our school or is it causing more trouble than it’s worth?

The first step we took in our research was to go to the very top. We interviewed the school principal, Mr. Smith, as well as both of the assistant principals, Mrs. Mampe and Mr. Coniglio. They told us that the school had its reasons to move away from the paper pass system. For one, kids were stealing passes and creating their own. “We have found a whole pad of paper passes in a kids' backpack and they were using them to get out of classes and cause trouble…it’s harder to verify the paper pass than it is the digital pass,” stated Mr Smith. The administrators were first introduced to the pass system by North Tonawanda High School, which had been utilizing it successfully for a decent amount of time. They brought the idea back to the high school and began to slowly introduce it. Of course, before they could hand the system off to the students, the teachers would have to take a look at it first. The principals took time to model the system for teachers and many of them expressed their worries about the new system. They wondered if a digital pass would take longer to create or if they weren’t the most tech-savvy,  would they be able to figure out the setup? Those were all valid questions to ask and from the perspective of the principals, they were all easy fixes. 

For many teachers, getting used to the new pass system within the first few weeks of school took a bit of time. As we interviewed Mrs. Fleming, a veteran teacher at CHS, we saw that the transition wasn’t as easy for some teachers as it was for others. Mrs. Fleming was one of the teachers who volunteered to test run the passes last spring. Because of this, she had a lot more time to get used to the system which is different from a lot of other teachers “If I was a new teacher using it I would probably have felt a little leary about it…I had a lot of teachers who came and asked me questions about the passes,” said Mrs. Fleming. However, from a teacher’s perspective, they have found that not only are the online hall passes a time saver but they also give students more independence. Auto passes can be created by a student without the teacher having to pause their instruction. This gives students the ability to take control of an, albeit small, aspect of their school life. A benefit of the digital pass system is that teachers and hall monitors can see who is in the halls at all times, even if a student isn’t going where they say they are going. From the data we had collected so far, hall passes seemed easy, useful, and convenient— at least to teachers. 

As we interviewed a few of CHS’s students we noticed that their opinions on the new system differed greatly from those of the teachers. Students find it harder to use digital passes than paper passes. This is primarily because the students have noticed that it takes a long time for passes to be filled out and accepted by teachers if they aren’t automatic. Kids see that time is taken away from instruction when a teacher needs to create any sort of pass, whether digital or paper. The students that we interviewed all said that they use online passes less often than they did with paper passes. They all agreed that paper passes were more convenient for them and the new passes would take time to get used to. As everyone learns how to quickly and effectively use the online hall pass system they will become more accustomed to it and hopefully not see it as too much of an inconvenience. The students see the passes as an inconvenience as they are still getting used to it, but they agree that the school will most likely not revert back to paper passes and they are indifferent about keeping the digital passes.

Students, staff, and administrators alike all have their own thoughts when it comes to the new digital hall passes. Some find that the system takes important time away from class while others find that the system actually makes instruction run more smoothly. Of course, both sides do not take into account people who do not share the same opinions as them. The passes seem easier and more convenient to teachers because filling out a digital pass that isn’t automatic takes much less time than a paper pass would have. On the other hand, students find the process more difficult because although they have independence, they actually have to take the time out of their day to open their devices and create a pass, which isn’t appealing to most. Both perspectives share valid opinions on the topic even if the opposite point of view isn’t taken into consideration. One thing both sides can agree on is that this new system is here to stay. Because of safety concerns and class time convenience, administrators, teachers, and students can all agree that this arrangement will not be going away anytime soon. Some hate it, some love it, and many are indifferent to this new system but as far as we know if you have to use the restroom during class tomorrow, your only option is to open up your phone to the Securly Pass app.