No one is worried about a kid being gone for 7 minutes. This is happening because some kids leave for the bathroom in some schools for 40 minutes at a time. Or they use bathroom visits to meet up. Or they leave the room to pick up the food delivery they ordered. Not saying it's great, but you can use it to avoid certain people being out at the same time, and you can see that a kid has left class for 5th time today, etc

e hall pass is awful. As someone stated above, it punishes everyone because a school can't control some kids who abuse going to the bathroom.


Look at the company who makes it, they're in Lancaster Pa, full of ideas for tracking kids. Who gets the data?

common sense media doesn't trust this app.

It runs a timer for how long your kid is in the bathroom. Teacher will ask your kid. Why were you gone for 7 minutes? Awful.

The only thing it is good for is asking for Advisory time passes without having to visit the teacher.

Waste of money.

Anonymous wrote:I have 2 experiences with it. First, my daughters MS in prince william used it. They used their phones at the time. Kids would make the pass on their phone, the teacher see it on their computer and can approve or deny it. Seemed to work on from what I heard, but yes, it caused the teacher to monitor their computer.

Second, the Fcps school where I work now is using it. With the no phone policy, passes are made on the teachers laptop and the student is approved or denied and they go wherever without any kind of device. The person receiving them clicks something on the site that they arrived. I guess that part works ok in theory, but it's one more thing for everyone to monitor. The nice thing about it is you can limit who is out of class and have a better view of how being out of class os being abused schoolwide

Wow that sounds like a giant pain. I don’t want to stop class to go approve a pass or even go over to a laptop to do so if I’m walking around while students are working. My school is not using this. I have a sign out/sign in sheet by the door, old school style, in my high school classroom. They don’t take a physical pass. They ask to go somewhere, I say yes, they sign out with their name and time and then sign back in. It is easy and it works.

Anonymous wrote:Your HS kids waste a ton of time “going to the bathroom.”

Guess what? Most skip from there, leave school or walk the halls for over 20 minutes.

Consider this closing the loophole.

what? if that is the case, then they should fail the class and deal with the consequences. My kid is responsible for doing their classwork and if they don't, then they should fail. I would HATE this system, but I think it probably gets kids ready for the real world. Look at employers monitoring work from home "productivity" https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/08/14/business/worker-productivity-tracking.html

Sadly we are moving to monitoring human behavior with computers. I am not a fan, but that is the direction society is moving.

Anonymous wrote:Your HS kids waste a ton of time “going to the bathroom.”

Guess what? Most skip from there, leave school or walk the halls for over 20 minutes.

Consider this closing the loophole.

Most? What is the evidence for your claim?

Your HS kids waste a ton of time “going to the bathroom.”

Guess what? Most skip from there, leave school or walk the halls for over 20 minutes.

Consider this closing the loophole.

This is another way we punish everyone because a few kids are ruining the school experience for everyone else. We need to go back to cracking down on bad behavior to send a message that it will not be tolerated. Punish the troublemakers, not everyone.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would have a problem with it if it was installed on my kid’s phone but not if it was some digital device they carried with them to the bathroom.

Ew. Are they sanitizing them between uses.

Also, if it was on their phones, wouldn't it violate the new no cell phone policy?

Best to email the school and get the real story.

Your kids probably used bathroom passes throughout ES.

Anonymous wrote:My middle school daughter tells me she sometimes spends an entire class period requesting an e hall pass to go to the bathroom. I guess the school uses it to regulate the number of kids in the halls so if the halls are “at capacity” no pass is available. It sounds like a horrible waste of time.

Yes, schools can limit the number of students in the bathroom at any given time. It makes it harder for students to meet up in the bathroom. At our school, the bathrooms are zoned so that each classroom is assigned to its nearest bathroom. If that bathroom is “at capacity,” students pass cannot be approved. Unfortunately, it also assumes that students and teachers are on laptops all day, which is not true in many classrooms. It is a good idea in theory, but is frustrating in practice. eHall Pass must have one heck of a sales team, because it costs schools $$$ per student.

My middle school daughter tells me she sometimes spends an entire class period requesting an e hall pass to go to the bathroom. I guess the school uses it to regulate the number of kids in the halls so if the halls are “at capacity” no pass is available. It sounds like a horrible waste of time.

I have 2 experiences with it. First, my daughters MS in prince william used it. They used their phones at the time. Kids would make the pass on their phone, the teacher see it on their computer and can approve or deny it. Seemed to work on from what I heard, but yes, it caused the teacher to monitor their computer.

Second, the Fcps school where I work now is using it. With the no phone policy, passes are made on the teachers laptop and the student is approved or denied and they go wherever without any kind of device. The person receiving them clicks something on the site that they arrived. I guess that part works ok in theory, but it's one more thing for everyone to monitor. The nice thing about it is you can limit who is out of class and have a better view of how being out of class os being abused schoolwide

EHall pass is being used at many FCPS middle and high schools this year. As a teacher, I hate it. It assumes that I’m always by my computer to check kids in and out or see passes that have been created for them. But to answer your question, yes, it does track data on the kids—where they went and when. At least a my school, it does not involve kids taking a device to the bathroom.

Anonymous wrote:I would have a problem with it if it was installed on my kid’s phone but not if it was some digital device they carried with them to the bathroom.

Ew. Are they sanitizing them between uses.

Also, if it was on their phones, wouldn't it violate the new no cell phone policy?

Best to email the school and get the real story.

I would have a problem with it if it was installed on my kid’s phone but not if it was some digital device they carried with them to the bathroom.

Our high school just sent an email that they are switching to E Hall Pass for kids who need to leave class for things like bathroom breaks, visiting counselors, etc

It sounds like tracking software.

The school presented this switch as a great new tool. (Of course) But I have serious reservations about a tracking software by an outside vendor being required for my kid to do something as simple as use the bathroom. I feel is it has the potential to be a huge violation of privacy.

Do any of the other high schools use this tracking software? What are your experiences with it? Are you able to to opt your kid out?

I have heard rumblings that some of the schools require this software to be installed on the students personal devices fo use the restroom. If that true, or just a rumor? The school I heard mentioned was Lake Braddock.