“Can I go to the bathroom?”

The phrase every teacher hears as soon as class starts. However, this week, that phrase will become extinct at Morton West. Morton West will be implementing the new SmartPass system school-wide, as the new form of passes for anything a student may need. The Sterling went into a deep dive into how this new digital pass system works.

The new SmartPass system will become the new virtual pass for students to use whenever they need to go to the bathroom, bookstore, etc. The main form of passes that Morton West uses currently are paper passes, and security staff as bathroom escorts. With the new SmartPass system, that will be no more. Ms. Hannah Henry, one of the Deans at Morton West, said, “The first goal of SmartPass is to create a universal system of use…so the hope is that SmartPass allows us to streamline that and create one singular avenue of passes.”

In addition, this new pass will also track how many students are allowed out in the hallways at each time.

“It is a system that is going to allow us to track movements in the hallway, figure out how many kids we have in the hallway at a certain amount of time, monitor passes, all within one singular space, so that everybody knows where students are and exactly what’s going on with them,” Dean Henry said.

The new digital pass also improves school safety and makes hallways much safer. “We’re not talking about 50 kids being let out at the same time anymore, were saying, ‘I know exactly who’s out, where they’re going to, and when they should be back’”. The new SmartPass system will have a 7-minute time limit for each pass. When those 7 minutes are up, the SmartPass system will start tracking for how much longer you’re out in the hallway before you come back to click the End Pass button.

The introduction of the new pass on Monday has stirred up conversations between students. The Sterling, met up with Alexis Prochaska’18 to get her comment on the new SmartPass system. “I’m excited for the new SmartPass system,” Prochaska said. “I think it’s going to be much easier for students to be able to go to the bathroom and out into the hallway.” The Sterling also caught up with Stephanie Ramirez’17 to get her comment on the new system, “I think it might have its ups and downs at the start,” Ramirez explained, “But I think it would still work after we figure out all of the issues in the first week it’s out.”

So, how do you feel about the new SmartPass system? You’ll be able to try it out this week.