KINGWOOD — Last week, Preston High School started an E-Hallpass trial to gather information for possible fall implementation.
The reason for starting to use it at the end of the year was so the school could collect data on how it works before fully committing, Principal Todd Seymour told the BOE at its regular meeting on Monday.
The day after the school started using the two-month free trial, the interface changed and there were problems, Seymour said. However, after a discussion with their rep it went back to the old interface over the weekend, which worked perfectly.
Teachers have told Seymour the new system is quicker — a student writes their own pass on ehallpass.com and the teacher approves it on their computer.
“So if a student wants to use the restroom, he doesn’t have to raise his hand and interrupt class, he just writes a pass out saying I want to go to the bathroom,” Seymour said.
The website also has a timer which lets teachers and hall roaming administrators know how long a student has been out of class. Students have been asked to turn their laptops around when they leave so the timer is visible.
“Teachers have said to me in the past that, you know, ‘I let the kid go to the bathroom and 30 minutes later realize they weren’t back,’ ” Seymour said.
Some teachers have asked about giving a physical hall pass and Seymour said that’s fine — but the website lets an administrator just ask the student their name and check it against the color-coded list of current passes.
“Green says they’re out and they’ve been approved and they’re out less than seven minutes. Yellow tells me they’ve been out over seven minutes,” Seymour said. “And red tells me they’re in trouble.”
BOE President Jack Keim asked about the students’ response.
“They’re OK with it,” Seymour said, “I mean some kids, you know, they don’t want to do it but honestly, it’s quick.”
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