Orland High School District 230 to expand digital pass system that tracks students
For a still unknown reason, sophomores at Andrew High School asked to leave the classroom far more than their peers this spring semester, said Mary Pat Carr, director of safety and security for High School District 230.
This befuddling trend, among others, was discovered through digital hall passes piloted at the school in partnership with Raptor Technologies' Smart Pass system, a technology that's grown increasingly popular at area schools, said Carr.
The passes were launched in an effort to address school safety and better understand how to support students. Students were given a maximum of three passes a day for five minutes each.
When using a pass, students leave their Chromebooks facing the teacher and displaying the pass, and hall monitors hold lists and photos of students out on a pass that include the remaining time.
These data-gathering passes are set to be implemented at Sandburg and Stagg high schools this fall, costing the district $19,990, after a successful, free-of-cost pilot at Andrew, said Carr.
School teachers, administrators, nurses, counselors and social workers have access to the data, she said.
"It gives us a ton of data about each individual student, which is helpful when teachers are working with parents and the kids who are struggling," Carr said. "If a student has low grades and is struggling to grasp the concept, but they're also out of class a lot, it's hard to catch up and so that's a great conversation piece they can have with the parent and student."
Carr said student privacy is tremendously important to the school and is protected by the school technology team.
Carr said the passes provide several safety benefits, such as identifying high traffic areas where the school could place additional monitors, keep students who fought with each other out of the hallways at the same time and find students in emergency situations and evacuations.
She said most school safety referrals - given in response to aggressive behavior and possession of drugs and alcohol - occur in hallways and bathrooms, and the passes allowed the school to more strategically use resources, like hall monitors, to limit opportunities for unsafe situations.
"It's all about the prevention of those safety referrals," Carr said. "Safety referrals have the biggest impact on the climate and culture of our buildings, and we want all students and all staff members to feel safe in our buildings."
Carr said the data also helped the school better support and understand students. She said the data identified "frequent flyers," or students who commonly used the passes, and that list of students was reviewed every week by the school's student intervention committee.
The committee, which included teachers, administrators, counselors, nurses and social workers, cross referenced this frequent flyer list with student grades to identify students who were struggling and missing a lot of class. The committee could intervene with these students and even limit the number of their passes.
Carr said that sometimes these conversations revealed student health issues that teachers were unaware of, and those students were connected with school nurses and counselors.
Students could also use the system to request time with their school counselor, social worker or nurse, and the system would notify the student if the staff member was available.
"We find that kids learn best when they're with their staff members, when they're with their peers and they're engaged in their learning, but before these passes we had no way to really track how often kids were out of class," Carr said.
Carr said parent feedback was positive, and several parents appreciated that it informed conversations with teachers about their child struggling in class.
"It's just another piece of information that tells the story for a parent of what their students’ experience is like at school,” she said.
She said students were weary about the passes limiting their movements, but said they adjusted quickly and a lot of students even had prior experience with the passes in middle school.
"Anytime you put boundaries on high schoolers, they may not always be thrilled about it, but they really adapted very quickly, and they're using the program very well,” she said.
Carr said the district already started training teachers and staff at Sandburg and Stagg about the technology. The district also plans to use the first two weeks of school this fall to train students and staff on the program.
She advised students to let administrators know if they have a unique situation that requires more passes. She said staff members will also coach students through using the new system.
"We welcome that information because is allows us to support them best," she said.
Carr also said the smart pass program offers other uses, such as monitoring afterschool activities and student identification cards, but the district does not yet to use those features.
"We want to make sure that we first use it for our original intentions and really get a foundation there, and then start to explore some of the other elements," Carr said.
District 230 created Carr's security position in 2024 in an effort to improve district safety as schools across the nation grappled with high-profile safety issues related to technology and mental health.
Superintendent Robert Nolting said he hoped Carr's position would improve communications among departments such as counseling and administration to prevent problems with individual students from escalating.
District officials also said at the time they noticed trends of more students transferring from school to school and experiencing a wider variety of stress, often related to their online presence.
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This story was originally published May 11, 2026 at 2:06 PM.