Housatonic Valley Regional High School introduced a new digital hall pass system on Oct. 19, drawing student complaints about bathroom access and increased monitoring.
Assistant Principal Steven Schibi announced the new system in an email to the student body on Oct. 15. The email said students would soon be required to request to leave a classroom through a website using their Chromebook laptops. The website is a product of education tech company Securly, which is also responsible for the web content monitoring system that Housatonic uses.
The system has also raised concerns about its effect on trust between students and teachers.
Students must now use an online form to log their intended destination and the estimated time the trip will take. Students can also leave comments on the request for teachers to see. The hall pass requests are then logged in a database teachers and administrators can use to locate students in case of an emergency, Principal Ian Strever said.
In previous years, hall passes have consisted of students requesting to go to other teachers’ rooms and filling out a physical, paper pass that the teacher would then sign. But for most students and teachers, the hall pass system had become relaxed and relied mostly on a teachers’ trust in students. Administrators contend that trust was abused, and students spent too much time outside the classroom, an issue the new digital system is intended to fix.
“It is designed to maximize their time in class,” Strever said.
Strever said a database such as the Securly hall passes allows administration and teachers to know where to locate students if and when an emergency arises.
”If we have a tool like this, that may take a little bit longer for students to fill out a pass, but it results in something, some data that we can use, information that we can use to make our school safer,” Strever said. “That’s where as an administrator, I think it’s my responsibility to make that happen.“
Some students have pushed back against the digital hall passes, protesting their use. Many students have complained that the digital form is overly time consuming and has prevented some from using the bathroom in times of need. A senior at Housy, John DeDenato, has plastered QR codes around the school in order to conduct a survey on the new system.
“This new electronic hall pass system does nothing but enforce what is essentially a threat to students,” one student wrote in the anonymous survey. “It feels dystopian, as if we are being monitored constantly and don’t even have the freedom to go to the bathroom without a teacher’s permission.”
According to the survey, many of the students are upset about the new hall passes. Menstrual cycles were often brought up when students were asked to give feedback.
“I hate the new hall pass system, for example when I was on my period the other day I was literally bleeding out while I was waiting the entire class to get accepted to go to the bathroom,” another student said in a survey response. “As I repeatedly asked to go to the bathroom the teacher repeatedly said no to opening their chromebook so I could go release myself. I’m very disappointed.”
Teachers said changes in school policy often trigger strong initial reactions from students that fade over time.
When asked about students’ reactions, Luke Vermilyea, a new teacher at Housy who has worked with the Securely digital hall pass in his previous school, said his former students’ strong feelings about the policy quickly faded.
“We had some students who were maybe a little bit frustrated with it at first,” he said. “Once the system got going and once students had used it, for a week or two [...] I didn’t hear anything negative about it for the rest of the year.”
Damon Osora, an English teacher and department chair, said the hall passes could affect students’ and teachers’ view of one another. He said trust is a fundamental aspect of collaborative relationships. “If you build good relationships with students, they’re going to refrain from behaviors that break that trust or change that really healthy relationship that they have with you as a teacher or an administrator,” Osora said.
