The school has decided to implement SmartPass, a website that will act as a virtual bathroom pass. This will be implemented on February 27th. With that, I reached out to Mr. Taylor, to ask him questions I believe represent the general student body.

What is SmartPass, and how does it work?

“SmartPass is a digital pass system, in which students can create a bathroom pass right on their chromebook, and go to the bathroom when they see necessary, and the teacher approves it. They can also create a pass to go to the library, to go to the office, to go see a nurse. The only time a pass has to be approved on the other end would be if you’re going to see another teacher, or the counseling office, unless there’s some kind of emergency, and then emergency wise, you can go to the counseling office of course. Really any emergency you don’t need a pass for, if it’s a true emergency. The program also lets us see the analytics in terms of how long students are out in the halls, how often they’re out in the halls, and this data is really helpful to pass on to their parents, especially students who are struggling academically and attendance-wise, we bring this in with our meetings with them. ”

What are the consequences of going into “overtime”?

“So if you’re excessively exceeding, let’s say you go forty minutes over, that would typically be a normal writeup anyway, I have plenty of write ups in here I’m dealing with anyway, teachers have written up kids for being out in the bathrooms for 20 minutes, and so I would just treat that like a normal writeup, it’s usually a day of detention. For going over slightly, there’s really no punishment. If you’re consistently over, over a period of time, say you’re constantly in the bathroom for 10 minutes, for every single class period for a month straight, we would use that data to contact your parents and let them know, maybe have a nice conversation with you, and that’s pretty much it.”

What will the maximum amount of time you can request be?

“It depends on the pass. If you’re going to the library, you can theoretically go for the whole period. It just depends on where you’re going. If you’re going to the bathroom, right now we have it set as a 5 minute pass. It’s something where it’s a nice goal. 5 minutes is pretty standard, and we totally understand that there’s times when you’re going to go over 5. It happens to us all. The kids who are abusing it, which is a very small percent, most kids are not abusing this at all, their data is going to stand out above everyone else, and they’ll be the ones that we are talking to. We don’t want to punish everyone else for doing it the right way.”

How long does the process take to request a pass?

“If you haven’t signed in, it takes you as long as you have to sign in to your email. Most of you will have your classroom that you’re in already set, so you don’t have to click there. It will also have you pulled up, where you’re coming from pulled up, so that being said, you basically hit create a pass, click to where you’re going, and then start the pass. Overall, three clicks.”

Why are we switching from the normal passes to SmartPass?

“One of the biggest things teachers have asked me to do is to find a way to make sure kids are in class and not abusing hallway passes, and not going to other classes when they’re not supposed to. Traditional passes can still accomplish that, but the difference is we struggle with students stealing passes, at one point we were making them every week, and then also, the idea of multiple students taking the pass into the bathroom with them weirds people out, it’s a little bit gross, So that’s the reason for it, and again, anything you can get data on, and you can get tracked, it’s done. The most powerful thing of this is identifying who the problem students are, so we can deal with just them, not the students who are doing things the right way.”

Will we still have the normal passes?

“No, there won’t be any normal passes, we don’t need those things. Maybe as backup, if the internet goes down, that way we still have a way to do it, but normal passes aren’t necessary, we still will use passes for when you’re being checked out, we’ll run down a yellow pass, if you’re going to the counseling department, as far as I know they’re still going to use the blue passes, but they could switch over and send digital passes.”

Do you think smartpass will be successful?

“It’s really up to how much buy in there is with everyone involved, like anything else we do or implement, but I do personally think it will be successful. I was researching this last summer, there’s a lot of schools that have been very successful with it. The common theme with each of those schools is that at first the students are very upset about it, that is very common, but once you learn how to use it, you realize that it doesn’t really limit your freedoms at all. In fact, you don’t have to wait for the bathroom pass to come back anymore. You just ask the teacher, and you’re gone.”

What do you have to say about the negative student feedback regarding SmartPass?

“It’s totally understandable. Any new change, one, is going to make people mad, and two, it feels like you’re being restricted, which is going to make teenagers mad, and so I wouldn’t really expect anything else, but I think once students start using it, and realizing it’s not that big of a deal, they’ll be happier, and it’s more efficient.”

Overall, If you have any more questions about SmartPass, Mr. Taylor is open to converse. I tested it out, and it was honestly pretty easy to use, but I think once everyone starts