Board of Education (BOE) members listened to a presentation on Newtown High School (NHS) testing a digital hall pass system, as well as a report on the district’s state assessment results, during their Tuesday, September 16 meeting.

NHS Principal Kimberly Longobucco delivered the first of two presentations that night, which focused on how the high school is piloting SmartPass over the next several weeks.

SmartPass is a digital hall pass system that gives insight on student movement at school. It is one of the two major digital hall pass systems used throughout Connecticut, according to Longobucco.

A pass is created when a student needs to leave class and go to another location such as the bathroom, library, or nurses’ office. Staff use the SmartPass system, available through a web-based program, to select where a student needs to go and make a one-way pass for them.

Students are meant to go to their respective location and a staff member is supposed to note them as received at the location. The system is malleable and can also be set to have students create their own pass.

Security personnel can track active passes. Each location has its own designated color; if a pass has elapsed, it will turn red. This signifies security personnel or people on hall duty that they should look for the student in question.

“This is two-fold,” Longobucco said. “It tells your teacher who sent you there, that you got there, and that you’re not wandering around someplace else. It also holds the people accountable for the location you’re supposed to arrive at.”

SmartPass has several notable features, one being that it displays students’ photos along with class-specific information. This lets teachers or other NHS staff identify a student in the hallway, along with where they are supposed to go.

“I can’t identify all 1,300 of my students, but if I have a picture with their name, it’s obviously easier for me to figure out,” Longobucco said.

NHS launched a SmartPass pilot program on Wednesday, September 17, where ten certified staff members will use it in their classrooms for three weeks. A lot of non-certified staff that work in different areas of the building, such as nurses, front office staff, and library staff, also have to be trained to use the system. The plan, Longobucco said, is to fully implement SmartPass once the pilot is over.

Longobucco briefly mentioned SmartPass in her Welcome Back Letter to parents on August 19. In it, she said a digital hall pass system will be coming down the road and that further communication would be forthcoming. Longobucco also talked to NHS staff about it in her opening faculty meeting that same month.

NHS went through the data privacy approval process for SmartPass in August to make sure they had all the appropriate paperwork with the State of Connecticut. A full implementation notice on SmartPass will be sent to parents “roughly around” October 3, with the actual implementation set for October 8, according to Longobucco.

Students will have up to three passes per day, although this is subject to change. However, Longobucco said a teacher can always override and create a pass if a student needs to go somewhere.

Further Discussion

When addressing the need for such a system, Longobucco said she and her team know kids congregating in bathrooms has been an issue at NHS.

“We saw in our climate survey, and knew even without our climate survey results, that we had issues with kids congregating in bathrooms and being able to control that,” Longobucco explained. “There’s 44 bathrooms at the high school, and not a lot of people to be managing that.”

Using a digital hall pass system, she said, is something that would help shape what students are doing, reduce the number of students in bathrooms, and track students’ time spent outside the learning environment.

A pass system controls how many people can go to certain locations. It also controls students in a way that is universal in every single classroom. Longobucco likened it to traditional hall passes, but noted digital pass systems as being quicker and more efficient.

“It collects all of the information you would need ... that would take a whole lot of time to figure out,” Longobucco said.

This includes room usage and number of created passes, as well as how much class time a student is missing.

“We’re looking for students to be in the classroom as often as possible,” Longobucco said. “This directly links to us putting cell phones away and making sure that the learning environment is conducive to all students ... The more time you’re in the classroom, the more you can be engaged.”

Longobucco and NHS Assistant Principal Paul Ribeiro recently visited Bunnell High School in Stratford, which has used SmartPass for the past three years. They wanted to see the system “in action” at a high school comparable in size and student number to NHS, as well as speak to administrators, students, teachers, and security about their feelings on it.

“It gave us a lot of really good information, Longobucco said. “We learned a lot from the demos and onboarding, but to see it actually working at a high school ... the accountability really, really works.”

Longobucco said she and her team are looking forward to what SmartPass can do for their school environment and seeing if it can effectively address issues such as bathroom congregation.

BOE Feedback

The floor then opened up for BOE members to ask questions and offer feedback.

BOE member Shannon Tomai asked how much the program cost, to which Longobucco said it was about $3,000 a year. Longobucco added it was purchased out of an activities account at the high school, and is not a part of the district’s education budget.

Tomai then expressed that a difference between standard passes and digital passes is that they can limit the amount of passes students can have. She said this could create an environment where students do not feel comfortable asking to use facilities.

“It feels like a violation of their own autonomy to have to even ask the question and then to know that they have a limit on how many times they can use facilities, so I’m really uncomfortable with that,” Tomai said.

She asked if they asked for parental consent to track students in this way, to which Longobucco said they are not tracking students.

“This is the same information we could have gotten before,” Longobucco explained. “It’s just a much easier way to gather that information for each student ... It provides us with the information of students who are supposed to be in the hallway at any given time.”

BOE member Brian Leonardi noted some freshman may be 13 years old and that, under the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act and Connecticut State privacy laws, people are required to obtain consent for anyone 13 years old or younger.

Longobucco said the data used by the system is similar to many other platforms used in the public school system. Leonardi noted that SmartPass is a third party, to which Longobucco said is why they have the data privacy agreement.

Leonardi then said he is not asking about the data privacy agreement, but instead about whether or not they obtained consent to use and process students’ personal data. Longobucco said she had not.

“I would strongly recommend that that’s something we look into to ensure we’re complying with the State of Connecticut privacy law and federal privacy law,” Leonardi said.

Longobucco said it is her understanding that it has all of the required components to comply with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), meaning that it has gone through what is required for public school systems.

“That was certainly my understanding, but I can certainly look into it further,” Longobucco said.

Superintendent of Schools Anne Uberti said they are not required to get parental consent since the information collected is “basically registry information.” What is required is that the company has signed the data privacy agreement, which says they will not use that data or sell it to anyone, according to Uberti.

Regardless, Longobucco and Uberti said they would look more into FERPA compliance.

Longobucco also said they have not had any feedback from parents about opting in or opting out.

When BOE member Chris Gilson asked if that was something they could offer, Uberti said they try to work with any parent who expresses a concern about something.

Other Topics

Assistant Superintendent Frank Purcaro also delivered a report on Newtown Public Schools’ state assessment results. This data includes the three mandatory assessments administered by the state to the district. These include the Smarter Balanced Assessment, Next Generation Science Standards Assessment, and the SAT.

Purcaro welcomed BOE members to stop him at any time, as there was a lot of data to go over. He went over each category by year, with each category having data starting from the 2018-19 school year and ending with the 2024-25 school year. Purcaro also presented data from surrounding towns and regions for each test.

As for how the data is actually being implemented, Purcaro said all relevant data is being reviewed by building leadership teams.

This data is also being reviewed at the district level by a District Data Team, which identifies strengths and areas of growth, and also creates goals and action plans for improvement.

School Strategic Plans will focus on high-leverage desired outcomes and action steps. These plans represent only a portion of the work, but are meant to provide transparency for how schools are responding to the data.

Beyond the presentations, BOE members also approved the Capital Improvement Plan in a unanimous vote. It was also the first meeting for NHS students Nate Hoag and Claire DiNoto, who will serve as the new student representatives for the school year.

Reporter Jenna Visca can be reached at jenna@thebee.com.