For the 2025-2026 school year, administration introduced a new electronic hall pass system.

In addition to the requirement of wearing physical lanyards for visual proof of passes, the digital hall passes were added for an extra layer of security. Digital hall passes were recently introduced via Synergy in efforts to improve attendance by reducing skipping and hallway wandering.

 These digital passes must be electronically requested and approved by students and their respective teachers and are equipped with a time limit to ensure accountability for students while outside of the classroom. The digital passes also allow for security to view active passes in order to keep an itemized record of student hall passes.

Security Team Leader Mr. Bryant Covington has noticed some benefits to security with the implementation of the digital passes so far. 

“It has been working well,” Covington stated. “Security wise, [it] helps us to know what students are where and how long they’ve been out.”

However, since their implementation, the digital pass system has received some criticism. Some have reported issues with the system include classroom disruption from requesting and approving passes digitally and difficulty transitioning to and managing digital passes.

Technology Department teacher Mr. Ishan Khetarpal believes that the digital hall passes lead to instructional disruption.

“It has been extremely disruptive,” Khetarpal said. “Students state that the time taken to do the digital hall pass takes away from instruction.”

Andrea Barillas, ISP junior, also commented on the disruptions caused by digital hall passes.

“If anything they create more unnecessary steps.” Barillas stated.  

Additionally, some technological issues with the system have been reported by staff and security. Khetarpal reported issues with Synergy student lists being misaligned with the actual classes. For the security team, they have experienced trouble accessing the data of some students’ hall pass history. 

“And I do notice that we don’t have the history [data], it’s not working.” Covington stated. 

Covington reassured that regardless of any technological issues with the digital pass system, school security would remain the same because the security team is not fully reliant on the digital hall passes.

“But for now, we’ll be more visual than anything,” Covington said. “We don’t put our full confidence in the digital hall passes.”