One of the new policies being strictly enforced this year in the district is the e-hallpass system.
E-hallpass is a new way for students to ask teachers to leave class for any reason, whether they are going to the restroom or the front office.
The student must fill in where they are leaving from, where they are going to and, depending on where the student is heading, why they are going to that location.
With the collected data and feedback on students in halls for extended periods or not being where they were supposed to be, new hall passes came to all three high schools.
Since the new pass system at Rider has been implemented, administrators have noticed a change in the number of students in the halls.
“It seems like there are not a lot of students in the hallway during classes,” said assistant principal Micheal Forney, who is also the admin in charge of e-hallpass. “This also allows us to maintain that safe and orderly environment that we want in school.”
The new hall passes allow teachers to hold students accountable for how often the student is leaving class. E-hallpass is not to crack down on students skipping classes. Admin still relies on the attendance system to catch them and hand out the consequences to students who cut classes.
Admin believe the e-hallpass is making teachers’ jobs easier with students leaving classes, although some teachers find the system a hindrance at times because they have to manually approve each pass from either their computer or the student’s computer.
“It makes it harder for me because it’s more distracting,” theatre teacher Zachary Jackson said. “But with what I do, specifically, I am up around doing things with students at all times. I am not just at the desk.”
One benefit of the e-hallpass system is if the student is gone for over 10 minutes, the system flags the student, making it easier to keep a tab on the length of time they are gone from class. This allows admin and teachers to keep track of trends of students missing instruction.
While some teachers find it challenging to teach with the system, others have mixed feelings about the e-hallpass system, like new math teacher Corey Rauscher.
“It is nice to know where people are at, but sometimes, if I am in the back helping a student and someone else needs to go, it’s hard to come to the front and approve something on my computer and then head back,” Rauscher said. “It disrupts the flow of what I’m doing sometimes.”
