A bathroom break can now come with a countdown clock for students at dozens of Philadelphia schools.
Thirty-eight schools across the Philadelphia School District are using an $80,000 digital hall pass system that tracks who is out of class, where students are going and how long they are gone.
At Baldi Middle School in Northeast Philadelphia, Principal Bianca Gillis said the system is aimed at addressing concerns including missed class time and safety.
“The biggest thing for me is the loss of instructional time and safety in the hallways,” Gillis said.
Teachers can issue digital passes for destinations such as bathrooms and the nurse’s office. The system displays a running clock, with different time limits depending on where a student is going.
The log is also accessible to staff across the building, allowing administrators to review which students were out of class at a particular time.
“If someone puts an apple in the toilet, I’m going to be able to go on this system and I’m going to be able to click on history and actually see who’s out at what time,” Gillis said.
The system can also restrict certain students from being in the hallways at the same time. Those restrictions are preset by administrators and indicated to teachers with a red “R.”
Students at Baldi Middle School had mixed reactions to the system.
“I feel like it’s more, mature? I guess?” eighth grader Atifa said.
“I don’t like the system, because when my friends’ out for too long, I can’t go. And that’s annoying because I need to go,” eighth grader Kyhier said.
Gillis said Baldi had been using the system for three weeks.
“We’ve been using this for three weeks, and I’m happy,” Gillis said.
District leaders described the technology as another tool to address student safety. There have been more than 2,200 assaults in Philadelphia schools since 2021, according to publicly available data analyzed by the NBC10 Investigators.
But Nicole Hunt, president of Unite Here Local 634, which represents school climate staff, said she wants more collaboration with the district.
“If it’s in 38 schools, this is again news to me,” Hunt said. “If one person knows one thing and the other person doesn’t know the other thing, you know, we have to come together as a team and I want to work more collaborative with the district.”
This story was originally reported for broadcast by NBC Philadelphia. AI tools helped convert the story to a digital article, and an NBC Philadelphia journalist edited the article for publication.