Bellevue East introduced the Securly E-Hall pass system to students and staff On Thursday, January 10, 2024.

The Securly E-pass is an electronic hall pass system for grades k-12, according to the compay’s website. Students use the “Securly pass” app on their school issued iPads. The app tracks and monitors how many times a student leaves the room and allows students access to other parts of the school from their classroom.

“This system is really no different from how we used things in the past,” Dean Charles Wright said.

On the Securly app students simply log in through Google with their school accounts. Then they choose the teacher’s name and their wing’s bathroom. The teacher then approves or the system automatically approves the student’s pass. 

“They are set as an automatic pass so if the student selects the right teacher and restroom, the teacher approves,” Wright said. “If there’s less than 4 groups of people in that restroom it automatically approves it then they come back and end their time.”

The Securly system has a timer on the pass, and traffic light colors to help monitor timing. The pass will only start when the student presses start. As soon as the student does that, the timer will start and the pass will turn green, indicating it is an active pass. The pass will start to turn yellow when it reaches 5 minutes, and then it will turn red once the pass reaches 8 minutes. 

“Right now the yellow pass and the red pass are simply used for conversational purposes,” Wright said.

Before the e-pass system, it was the responsibility of the teachers to monitor student bathroom usage, and the responsibility of the deans to find out what students were doing in the bathroom. The Securly pass replaced manual tracking with digital advantages. 

“We tell them [teachers] to use their judgment when it comes to the amount of yellow or red passes students have to result in that simple conversation,” Wright said.

According to the Society for Women’s Health Research, a non profit organization in Washington D.C., 84% of students leave the classroom for other reasons than using the bathroom. The Securly pass helps filter out those students with the three pass limit. 

“During class time it can get annoying when you’re just trying to use the rest room and there are people in there just messing around,” senior Paris Plough said.

The Securly pass also has resources to help students who don’t understand the pass. On the student side and teacher side, in the drop menu, there is a button called training. These resources provide students and teachers with a basic, step-by-step tutorial. Students can also make the process easier by saving their favorite teachers and bathrooms so they don’t have to scroll and look for them every time. 

“All I had to do really was log in and put all my teachers as my favorites and also the designated bathroom,” Plough said.

Sometimes emergencies happen. Emergencies can arise from health issues, menstrual cycles, and simply just needing to use the restroom. If a student uses all three passes, teachers can issue a teacher pass. 

“So students have each passing period before school and after school plus the three passes we give them,” Wright said. “If they use their three passes and it is a true emergency it is left up to the teachers discretion, the teacher can go ahead and do what’s called a teacher pass.”

The Securly e-pass has had a impact on Bellevue East. It’s helping teachers minimize interruptions during instruction time and has shown to help reduce crowding in bathrooms.

“I would say that since implementing the e-pass system, bathroom use in my room has gone down,” instructor Stephanie Perrin said.