Recently, to kick off the 24’-25’ school year, many schools throughout the Palm Beach County school district including your very own West Boca Raton High School have begun to implement a new bathroom/hallway pass. The scanner company’s name is Student Conductor, their main mission: “Our goal and mission with the Student Conductor system is to simplify the discipline, fine, and tardy assignment and tracking process so students are back in class quickly and school officials can easily perform their administrative duties.” These passes are digital; the students scan their badge’s barcode on the front and go to the bathroom/destination, they then have a ten minute timer in which in those ten minutes they must return, if not returned in those ten minutes teachers will notify administration and supervision. Interestingly, when speaking to students about their feelings on the topic, student Brianna Hahn said “Scanning yourself out every time you have to use the restroom is ridiculous”, student Jorge Lopez stated “The hall passes are a good way to monitor where a child is. ” and lastly student Amy Levy feels “I think that the new hall passes are a waste of time a distraction from our time in class.” Students and parents have many questions and concerns over this new implementation, so I interviewed Mr.D’Annunzio to address many of these comments, questions and concerns.
Here are the questions with Mr.D’Annunzio:
Q- Are the scanners being implemented at every school in Palm Beach county or just here at West Boca?
A- “The majority of schools in Palm Beach county do utilize some type of software to serve some type of the same service. It’s seen as the best practice throughout the district.”
Q- Why is the school implementing the scanners?
A- Recently a parent had the same question in which Mr.D’Annunzio responded with: “…these are our new digital hall passes. Student Conductor keeps a log / data archive of students being out of class complete with a timestamp. This is simply an added layer of safety and single school culture of students wearing and utilizing the district’s mandated universal student IDs.”
Q- What happens after the time maxes out?
A- “We hope they will be back within the 10 minute mark but we do understand that there can be outlying situations in which a student is unable to return within the 10 minute timer. And if so, the teacher will buzz the office and inform them that said student has not returned so that admin and supervision can ensure if they are safe.”
Q- Why are our parents notified every time we go out of the room?
A- “We come from a community that has very high standards for high student achievement and while all of our students use the restroom when they need to, we want to inform the parents that if there is missed instruction time it is for a valid reason.”
All in all, there are some different opinions toward the new hall passes, but after reviewing the poll posted by us asking how the students/people of the school feel about the new passes it is clear that the majority of the voters feel negative feelings toward the passes. But while these hall passes are new and we don’t have much experience with them yet, feelings may change. All we know is that time will tell.
