Recently, hall passes have been introduced on campus for the purpose of maximizing safety and having a more accurate attendance record. As a higher number of students return to school from a year and a half of HyFlex learning, the concerns for security are greater. Students are also required to have a hall pass when coming to a class late.
“The passes sort of serve as a visual reminder to the teacher that they have to go back and update or change the attendance status,” Head of Upper School Tracy Bonday said.
Despite Trinity being an open campus, Bonday and Head of Middle School Jason Dowdy made the decision to have the passes only for the upper school students. Bonday and Dowdy came to this decision because of the lack of concerns within the middle school.
The ideal use of the hall passes is for when a student is sent across campus for an extended period of time.
“If [a student] were gone for a longer period of time, and there was something that occurred [such as] an emergency, we need to be able to easily track or try to find the student,” Bonday said.
Bonday believes the hall passes will have the effect of teachers stopping students on campus to see where they are going.
“I think what’s happening is teachers who have seen the students with a hall pass, are actually more inclined to say to them, ‘where are you going,’” Bonday said.
Most students do not know why hall passes were placed in the school and feel as though the independence expectation in a college preparatory school is revoked.
“I feel like ever since like sixth grade, every year we’ve slowly had more independence, and then with the hall passes, it kind of just takes away that independence,” sophomore Grace Kilger said.
Kilger has been attending Trinity since 6th grade and has multiple siblings who have graduated from here. She feels that the implementation of hall passes only in the upper school means that those in middle school have more freedom.
“Upper school is supposed to have more independence than middle school so it makes me kind of upset about that,” Kilger said.
Mortimer shared a similar belief of the middle school having hall passes either alongside of or instead of the upper school.
“You would imagine that middle schoolers have been in more need of hall passes because they’re just out of elementary school,” Mortimer said.
Currently, the hall passes are in their “training phase” as Bonday put it, where they are not sure if the passes are the right fit for campus yet.
“If we don’t see over time that it has made a difference, then we don’t keep them,” Bonday said.
