Summit Middle School is trying out a new system for the school year that will change how students are allowed to leave the classroom.

Principal Nelle Briggs said the school rolled out the system this year where students make electronic requests to leave the classroom via a platform called SmartPass. According to the SmartPass website, it is used in major school districts such as Boston Public Schools and Orange County Public Schools.

“This system is built for schools to streamline (students’ requests) to leave the classroom for any purpose, whether it’s going to the bathroom, seeing their counselor or meeting with another teacher,” she said.

She said the Building Leadership Team at the middle school recognized the need for a new hall pass system last school year and wanted to better manage the number of students outside the classroom at any given time, especially at times where teachers are in class and can’t spend time in the hallways supervising. 

She said, for now, the new program will be a pilot, and it will be decided at the end of the school year if the school should stick with it. 

According to Briggs, students with different individual needs that require leaving the classroom have different settings in the SmartPass system that allows them more flexibility. In the event of an emergency, teachers have discretion to override the electronic pass system to address the students’ needs.

Phones must be in students’ lockers during the school day, so they are making these requests to leave the classroom on a school-provided Google Chromebook.

Briggs said if there are too many students in the hallway, they are placed on a waitlist and then are issued the pass when the volume of students in the hallway has lessened.

“Our primary goal is to keep students in the spaces where the learning is occuring for the highest percentage of time possible,” she said. “We also want to make sure students are in spaces where there are high levels of supervision to help guide positive decision making.”

She said the new hall pass system was discussed at Back to School night Sept. 4 and the school has been answering questions that are coming from families about the matter.