Digital Hall Pass

1984 Tracking system

Why read Orwell’s 1984 in school when you can just experience it first hand in the public school with Digital Hall Pass?

On first glance Digital Hall Pass seems innocent enough, it replaces written sign-out sheets for leaving the classroom by replacing the paper hall pass with a digital app from commercial software companies.

When the student needs to leave the classroom, without interrupting the teacher or class, the student will make a special request on his/her school-issued Chromebook, the teacher will ‘approve’ from their device so that the child can leave the class to go to another location in the school (e.g., office, nurse, bathroom). Other features of this device allow the teacher to set time limits and alerts so that when student is gone too long, an administrator or resource officer is alerted to look for the student to keep kids safe. The system can be set to remind student when they have a counseling session or a nurse appointment for meds, and automatically generate the needed hall pass.

The software will record the student’s time and location around the school (e.g., bathroom, library, water fountain, nurse, visit another teacher) by teachers and staff. Every movement at every time will be tracked, recorded and stored in a database according to how the teachers and staff enter the information. The school doesn’t need GPS to track your child’s movement, the staff can be the eyes and ears of the hall pass.

The stored database of all your child’s movements will be reviewed so that the administration can use the software to predict if the child has a pattern that is outside “normal use”. Administrators are alerted to patterns based on data rather than anecdotes and guesswork, and can set limits for individual students based on data reports. The software can also notify school administrators if a student is asking to leave class with unusual frequency, which might have gone unnoticed without the tracking system. Schools can even target specific groups of students from leaving the room at the same time in different classes and meeting up elsewhere on campus. The software can come with advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) features that can make a ‘best guess’ as to who is meeting up in other school locations when the kids are requesting to go to different places (e.g, water fountain or nurse) at the same time in different classrooms. Administrators can also determine who was at an incidence in the school, like vandalism.

Even more additional features can be added on, creating one large data base with your student ID’s and information like library book check-outs, attendance, and lunch purchases.  

The application is cloud-based so information is stored long-term and data reports do have a potential to be misused or misinterpreted. It is up to the teachers and staff to correctly record and track the students, any mistake could potentially put the student at a scene of a crime in the school. When you are in a large school with varying lunchtimes, the software may unintentionally group kids who just happen to have the same bathroom schedule and are not actually meeting up for nefarious purposes. The time limit causes good students to have anxiety by rushing their time in bathroom with an electronic timer, there is no room for flexibility. All of this tracking will most certainly make the student feel like a prison inmate. How much tracking do these minors need without being under arrest or under suspicion of a crime? Next, they will be sticking ankle bracelets on these kids. How much of this is legal without parental consent?

The following NJ schools have already implemented Digital Hall pass software: Belvidere (Warren Co), Del Val (Hunderdon Co),Eastern Regional School District (Camden Co), Hackettstown High School (Morris County), North Hunterdon-Voorhees Regional High School District(Hunterdon Co) , Williamstown High School (Gloucester Co), Del Val (Hunterdon County)

Digital hall pass software:

• e-Hallpass by EduSpire Solutions (first company to make it in 2013)

• Minga

• Smart Pass 

• DigiPass

• SchoolPass

• HallDash

• e-hallpass