Digital hall passes replaced the traditional paper passes at the Spring-Ford Ninth-Grade Center this fall with the adoption of the 5-Star Students System app. These electronic passes allow administrators to keep accurate records of hall pass use – including destinations, times utilized, and frequency of pass use.

“The passes have made it easier for teachers and students and have provided more accurate information,” said Dr. Kelly Di Pietro-Edwards, Principal of the Ninth-Grade Center.

Students can request a pass via their chromebook, in which a teacher can approve the pass, allowing the student a five-minute absence.

The teachers are finding the new passes helpful. 5-Star Student provides insight regarding how much instructional time the students are missing. The hall pass system also prevents a potential conflict by preventing students with known conflicts from signing out at the same time.

Traditional paper sign-in and sign-out sheets were not always accurate and some students do not even take the time to sign-in and out. That made it difficult to track where students were headed and, more importantly, how often students were using hall passes across their various classes during the day.

“The 5-Star electronic pass system has been able to provide teachers with data that we were not able to access previously,” said Jaqueline Perry, a current science teacher at the Ninth-Grade Center. “How often are students leaving class, is it the same times/classes consistently, how much class time are students missing?”

Students, on the other hand, are not the biggest fans of the electronic passes. The biggest complaint many students have regarding the electronic hall passes is not having enough time before the pass expires.

“They’re very inefficient, it doesn’t give us enough time to go to the bathroom,” ninth-grader Bee Lesage said.