During the second semester, Plainfield South High School plans to implement Securly, E-hall passes, in classrooms to keep better track of student downtime and locations when in the hallways.

Securly is a program that allows for digital passes to be drafted and approved by teachers. These passes keep track of where the student is going and how long they have been out of the classroom.

Assistant Principal Mr. Nieto explained the process of using the system.

“I click on the link, I do a search for the teacher, there’s a drop down menu that says bathroom or water or depending what other things we want to use it for and then they hit submit” While the teacher is teaching they get a notification on their computer. If they’re at their desk they see a box containing the students name, desired location, and an approve or decline button.

Currently, only teachers have access to the program and a few volunteers are testing it with their students.

 One of these volunteers, Sevgi Acik, a French teacher, describes having good experiences with Securly on her end and explains how easy it is to operate and how beneficial she finds the program for keeping track of students’ location and minimizing downtime. She mentions thinking that if students have to send a pass from their computer in the future, it may discourage them from leaving the room when they don’t need to.

“They need to get used to it and this year I don’t think we will, especially this semester, the students won’t be able to use it so much. If the teacher uses it maybe this semester. Second semester we will have more students able to use it,” said Acik. She also later mentioned she didn’t see the widespread usage of Securly as much during the first semester but more so during the second semester.

The Securly passes are still very new to South, so there are still things to be worked out while teachers get accounts set up. According to Nieto, he hopes to get more teachers to use the passes after Thanksgiving break and open more communication with students about them during the second semester.

The reason behind Plainfield South’s recent shift from paper to digital passes was rooted in an eco-friendly mindset.

“You’re saving a ton of copies of passes to be honest with you. A lot of the time students would lose their pass so then it was kind of tough to prove where you’re supposed to be,” Nieto said.

Switching from paper passes to digital passes also allowed for better monitoring of student behavior. 

“We can keep track of student downtime if they are out and about too many times in the hallways or just wasting time in the hallways avoiding class. So I think a lot of it would be to maximize more educational time in the classroom instead of being outside of the classroom,” Nieto said.

The online pass system has certain special functions. 

“You can actually set up appointments with your counselor, your social worker, your dean, with the nurse and that is also a step further down the line,” Nieto said.

The online pass system will not completely replace paper passes with a few exceptions. 

“I know we have a lot of students with our fast passes like for social-emotional distress or maybe some of us may have a little more anxiety here or there and we’re giving a pass from the social worker hey here’s you can leave class 5 minutes early we’re still going to honor a lot of those paper passes so that it’s not a disruption to any individual students needs,” Nieto said.

Securly was originally implemented in Middle schools before being added into high schools like Plainfield North.

 “It has been implemented widely at the middle schools, I believe. And because of how it’s being used at the middle schools we’ve heard great things about the system, so that’s when conversations started happening at the high school level. If we could implement it, and what it would look like,” Nieto said.

Freshman, Jacob Chase at Plainfield North, has used Securly and has never experienced any issues with it. He has a mixed opinion on the system though. 

“I like the regular pass better, at least because you don’t need to wait for your teacher and there is no time limit. Also, there’s no pass limit each day but I do like the Securly cause then there are not a lot of people in the bathroom,” Chase said.