Staunton Schools to begin using electronic hall passes and bus tracking system

STAUNTON — New technology awaits students as they head back to school Wednesday in Staunton. The school division recently announced plans to introduce both a digital hall pass for students to use during the school day and software to track school buses as they take kids to and from school and extra curricular activities.

E-hallpass is a cloud-based system used to manage hall passes for students, replacing traditional handwritten passes. Staunton City Schools will begin implementing the new digital system on the first day of school at both Staunton High and Shelburne Middle.

Students will have e-hallpass as one of the apps available on their Chromebook.

"Students will create their own pass and it must be approved by their teacher," explained Tom Lundquist, the division's director of technology. "When the students arrive back at class, they check themselves back in. Our administration teams have full access to all passes and can monitor hallway traffic if in question."

The division will spend $3,600 annually on e-hallpass for students at the high and middle schools.

It doesn't appear individual students will be tracked, so there shouldn't be any fears that the system will turn Staunton High into Hogwarts with its own version of a Marauder's Map.

"We only monitor hallway traffic and the students who have been approved to be out of class at that time," Lundquist said. "We are not monitoring the students' building location."

Still, the concerns about privacy that a parent who messaged The News Leader had may not be completely unfounded.

Victoria Nash is the director at the Oxford Internet Institute in England. A research and teaching department at the University of Oxford, the Institute studies the social science of the internet. As more and more technology finds itself into the classroom, she said it often goes without enough oversight.

"For example, the hall pass system, if actually all they need to know are numbers, it seems really odd to me that actually that has to be related in any way to a student's own login," Nash said. "If they have their own account on these systems, that suggests to me that at some point that is going to make them traceable."

Meanwhile, the bus tracking system, Crosswalk K-12, will not go live until Sept. 5 to allow school officials and bus drivers to get used to the system.

"The division has clear accounting of which students are on which bus and which stop they exit the bus," Lundquist said. "This is for the parents' benefit and the safety of our students. Parents get real time app access to only their child or children to know when the bus will arrive at their bus stop."

Students will receive a badge that they use to scan on and off the bus. All buses have a live database connection to the student information system that includes photos. If a student doesn't have the badge, the driver can touch the child's picture on the touchscreen to check them on and off, Lundquist said.

Also, for convenience, students can use their phone to take a photo of the badge and use that instead of the badge itself.

"They may forget a badge," Lundquist said, "but, you know, they won't forget that phone."

Parents are only able to track their child's bus location, not other children, per the school division. And the tool is optional, meaning if parents don't wish to participate they don't have to.

The system will also be used to help make bus routes more efficient. All buses are equipped with GPS and internet connectivity for use with Crosswalk.

"In case of emergencies, we know exactly where the children are and the bus so emergency responders can arrive at the exact location faster," Lundquist said. "Communication is improved to our drivers. We have the capability of providing critical medical information about the students through the confidential student information system records. This can aid medical personnel in their responses to any potential incident."

The system will also be used for vehicles used to transport students with special needs. The school division needs exact mileage for those trips for Medicare claims and Crosswalk will provide that information.

"Many times, students get picked up or dropped off at different stops on different days of the week," Lundquist said. "This assists us with managing that data."

Nash said many city buses display their arrival times at bus stops so that's not necessarily troubling to her.

"I would wonder in relation to school pupils and school buses, how are they securing those systems so that only parents have access? Can you ensure you're not providing that information to a bad actor?" Nash said. "So then that's partly around security, I suppose. So yes, for me, there's concerns about privacy and proportionality, but also concerns about the security of these systems too."

For their part, UnitedGPS, the developer of Crosswalk, posted on its website that "the data is stored and managed solely by the company, ensuring that all data is encrypted and protected from unauthorized access."

Crosswalk K-12 will cost the division $26,500 annually for connectivity charge, routing, student information system integration, printers and various licenses. There was also a one-time expense of $78,325 for bus and vehicle hardware, tablets, training, badges and implementation.

Nash said people tend to trust schools to have the best interests of students at heart, and she said it's likely much of the data collected from systems like e-hallpass and Crosswalk will be used with good intentions. That, however, doesn't mean that the potential to use it for ill isn't present.

"If that functionality is there, just because they're not intending to use it now doesn't mean it couldn't be used in the future," Nash said. "So I think that would be my biggest concern."

Nash said if parents are concerned about this technology and how the data is being used, she'd ask school officials the following:

• What data are you collecting about my child?

• Who has access to that data?

• How are you going to use it?

• How are you keeping it safe?

And, if you are still concerned after those questions are answered, Nash said it might be worth parents asking school administrators if their child can opt out.

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— Patrick Hite is a reporter at The News Leader. Story ideas and tips always welcome. Contact Patrick (he/him/his) at phite@newsleader.com and follow him on Twitter @Patrick_Hite. Subscribe to us at newsleader.com.

This article originally appeared on Staunton News Leader: Staunton Schools to begin using electronic hall passes and bus tracking system