Q: Why was the E-Hall pass instated?

A:  We have some classrooms that don’t use the passes, so we have kids in the hallway with no pass on. And it’s hard to know where [students] are supposed to be. Right now, we have kids that use hall passes every hour of the day, and teachers don’t know that kids are out and missing instructional time. Now we can know where students are throughout the day and are able to track how much class time they have missed.

Q: How will this affect Students and Faculty?

A: Truly, it shouldn’t affect someone’s day-to-day at all. Because right now, you should be getting permission from a teacher to use a hall pass anyway. This way, you can log into your E Hall Pass, request it, and the teacher can even set it up for auto passes. So you’re not raising your hand, you’re not disrupting, disrupting instruction. As for teachers, it’s not much different from the clipboard in the back of teacher’s room where they have you sign out anyway, and substitute teachers are given a code so they can access the software.

Q: What is the overall goal? 

A: The overarching goal is to keep students in attendance, in class.

Q: How did GHHS land on this program?

A: I was at a couple of different meetings since August, and different schools are using an electronic pass system, E-Hall Pass is one of the examples that I learned about. So the four of us administrators, asked if we could have a demo session with a company to learn more about it. There are other electronic systems out there. This just happens to be the one that schools closest to us, or administrators that I know, have used. And they gave us an opportunity to do a semester-only package so we could try it, to see if we like it.

Q: How much is it costing GHHS, and will there be cuts made?

A: It is costing $3.50 per student at the high school for an entire school year. However, we were prorated because we are on a semester trial. Our final invoice hasn’t arrived yet. But, no cuts will be made due to this software. The money is coming out of the online tools section of our building budget. 

Q: What are the punishments that go along with the new system?

A: We’re not even there right now? Nope, we’re just dipping our toes in the water. I would say to you, the penalties are going to be no different than they are now for the immediacy. This I think is a little bit more private way to do it because I could have a conversation with you, and limit your hall passes to five a week on the administrative end. Your teachers would never need to know. But like I said, we’re starting with it open, and we’ll see how it goes from here.