Remember the clipboard with the sign-in and sign-out log in your fifth-period class?
Or how about the hall pass attached to a toilet plunger or a chemistry beaker that you had to lug past lockers — as the actual pass — and into the bathroom?
Departing a middle or high school classroom and heading to the nurse, bathroom or the library can be humiliating or disruptive.
For many Tucson-area students and teachers, that clunky system has been replaced.
The digital hall pass is a solution, educators say, to streamline classroom breaks and monitor who’s where in the halls. It is being explored and expanded all over Southern Arizona.
“I think it’s easier than doing the other way because before you have to write it and log out,” said Ironwood Ridge sophomore Teya Keena. “You don’t have to disrupt anyone now.”
In the Tucson Unified School District, 15 schools are using the digital pass to varying degrees depending on the school and the need. The program began in May 2024 with Mansfeld Middle School. Five high schools were added this school year.
It’s been a simple transition and the rollout has varied by school, said TUSD’s Chief Technology Officer Rabih Hamadeh.
“There are a few advantages (to the new system),” Hamadeh said. “The No. 1 issue for us as a district is to make sure that our students are safe and secure. So security for the school and knowing where the student is at all times, who’s going from one class to another.”
In TUSD, students ask a teacher for a pass and it’s logged via student ID with the existing education software platform, Synergy — which is used by parents, students and educators for everything from checking grades and direct messaging to taking attendance. The system records the destination, the student departs (often with colored paper in their hand so hall monitors know where they are headed) and then they check back in with the teacher upon return to the classroom.
At Sahuaro High School where the program started last fall, classroom reentry is “a little cumbersome” for teachers, Principal Bobby Estrella said. “They have to stop what they’re doing and go back in and check them in. So the check-in process is something we’re going to try to work on now.”
The program allows schools to track data and note trends, he said. “Then we can start looking,” Estrella said. “Are these issues impacting the safety of our school or the culture? Mainly, is it impacting learning? Are there correlations, in fact?”
Because Synergy was already being used at the 88 TUSD schools, there was no start-up cost. It was a feature offered with the existing system. Schools spent about $300-500 per device for a classroom or an attendance clerk or hall monitor, if they did not already have one, Hamadeh said,. The total is less than $25,000, he said.
In Amphitheater Public Schools, kiosks greet any latecomers in the main office. Students scan IDs or input their ID number and a printer issues a paper receipt. Students take that to class (think tardy slip), but the system has already logged the student as in school and headed to the classroom.
Amphi uses Infinite Campus as its education platform and its three high schools started using the hall-pass program this year. Schools use existing Chromebooks, computers and scanners — and the software within the existing system cost $23,700, Amphi says. Digital hall passes will be in middle schools next year at no additional cost.
“It gets kids to class quicker because they don’t have to stand in line and get a physical pass. It just saves a lot of time,” said Michael Warrick, Amphi’s student information systems analyst/trainer.
After a student requests a pass, a timer starts — preset timers exist depending on the task — say five minutes for a bathroom pass.
“We know at any given time in the day what kids are out of class,” Warrick said. “We have a list of what kids were where and we can also limit it to what bathrooms they can go to.”
While observing a classroom earlier this week, Ironwood Ridge High School Principal Oranté Jenkins said he watched the hall pass system in action and the teacher commented she was “very pleased with the way it’s working,” he said.
“Some teachers use logs, but holistically, we had physical passes that we use. So we do both here at Ridge. We have a physical pass that we create and we color code them and we change them periodically,” Jenkins said. “Implementing a new curriculum is far different than implementing something that’s very procedural such as this. So there’s always things that are new and innovative, but this lifting is a little different.”
Restricting who can congregate where and when, is a benefit to the new pass system, administrators say.
That moderation is not lost on students.
“And now, you can track where the students are going,” said Keena, who’s on the Nighthawks’ cheer squad.
Tracking movements is a benefit, say administrators and staff, who want to limit groups of students meeting in hallways or bathrooms during class time.
But in one Oregon school, a parent drew the line last summer when he sued the Beaverton School District over that data collection. He said it violates his parent rights and grants staff access to an inordinate amount of student data. His middle school daughter told him she was anxious and uncomfortable with her school’s new attendance process and the hall pass tracking system.
Local administrators say this data already existed but is now tracked in a more streamlined way. And like any tech, things can stall or go awry.
“I think the only drawback is the computer. It logs out at times and it makes it hard when it breaks down. That’s like, when the Wi-Fi’s down everywhere,” says Ironwood Ridge athlete Makenna Chulick, 15.
“I’m nervous at times, but I’m pretty sure it’s pretty secure,” Chulick said. “And it’s only like five minutes or whatever.”
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