Editorial: High tech hall passes are smart solution

Not all hall passes look alike.

In some schools, they are slips of paper that detail exactly where a student is allowed to go, at what time and why. In others, they are physical objects — sometimes comically large or obvious — that not only tell other staff members the student has permission to be where they are but are reminders to the teacher that someone is out of class. Sorry, Emily, you have to wait until Aidan comes back to go to the restroom.

The problem with those passes is that they don’t keep a record. All 25 kids in history class could take Mr. Smith’s big wooden hall pass to go back and forth to the restroom in a 40-minute period. Miss Jones might write down exactly where Olivia is going on her paper pass but is there a copy?

New Kensington-Arnold School District is changing that at Valley Junior-Senior High School with an electronic hall pass system that makes a lot of sense. Students apply for a pass via an app on a mobile device. The teacher approves the request. The school then has a way to know exactly who was going where and when they came back.

So why is that important?

It may seem like a reaction — even an overreaction — to the recent spate of restroom vandalism that has been tied in part to the “Devious Licks” TikTok trend that was causing problems in schools around the country in September.

The e-pass is a better way to solve the problem than many schools were forced to use — namely closing the bathrooms. That’s not a good long-term solution for a building with hundreds of kids.

It’s also a way to discourage the students from engaging in unsafe or illegal behavior if they know it will be tracked back to them, as well as to absolve a student who might otherwise be accused without the digital trail.

But aside from that, schools should know where the students are. It’s not just about protecting the paper towel dispensers. It’s about protecting the kids.

In the event of a fire or other emergency, head counts are one of a school’s most vital tools, but you can only count the kids you can find. In the heat of a crisis, who will remember which student is in the restroom and which one went to get a book from a locker?

New Kensington-Arnold is making a smart, tech-savvy move that is in the best interest of both the bottom line and student safety.