![\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/digital-hall-pass-1.png\")
<\/p>\nA bathroom break can now come with a countdown clock for students at dozens of Philadelphia schools.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
At Baldi Middle School in Northeast Philadelphia, Principal Bianca Gillis said the system is aimed at addressing concerns including missed class time and safety.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe biggest thing for me is the loss of instructional time and safety in the hallways,\u201d Gillis said.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The log is also accessible to staff across the building, allowing administrators to review which students were out of class at a particular time.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf 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,\u201d Gillis said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
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 \u201cR.\u201d<\/p>\n
Students at Baldi Middle School had mixed reactions to the system.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like it\u2019s more, mature? I guess?\u201d eighth grader Atifa said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t like the system, because when my friends\u2019 out for too long, I can\u2019t go. And that\u2019s annoying because I need to go,\u201d eighth grader Kyhier said.<\/p>\n
Gillis said Baldi had been using the system for three weeks.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been using this for three weeks, and I\u2019m happy,\u201d Gillis said.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
But Nicole Hunt, president of Unite Here Local 634, which represents school climate staff, said she wants more collaboration with the district.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf it’s in 38 schools, this is again news to me,\u201d Hunt said. \u201cIf 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.”<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A bathroom break can now come with a countdown clock for students at dozens of Philadelphia schools. Thirty-eight…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":301853,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[69,71,70,8973],"class_list":["post-301852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-philadelphia-school-district"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=301852"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301852\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/301853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=301852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=301852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=301852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}