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The NS administration has reintroduced hall passes at NS to help cut down on the number of students in the halls during class time.
At the beginning of the school year teachers had problems with students being out in the hallway during class causing disruptions. The students were in the halls doing things they weren’t supposed to be doing and even skipping class causing other problems to occur.
“I want to know if a kid is just wandering the hall because they snuck out of class or if they are sluffing or if there is actually a reason for the kid to be out in the hall,” assistant Principal Matt Syme said.
To get rid of the problem with students being out in the hall, teachers were given hall passes to give to the students to show that the students are where they are supposed to be and have permission to be in the hall.
“If a kid has a hall pass, that means the kid told somebody and somebody knows where the kid is and the kid is probably doing what they are supposed to be doing,” Syme said. “If a kid doesn’t have a hall pass that means nobody knows where the kid is and the kid could be doing who knows what.”
The hall passes given to the students are a piece of paper on a lanyard with the class they came from on it. Some teachers have their own type of hall pass and will use those instead.
“The hall passes on lanyards and that are small are fine, but some teachers have something crazy for their hall pass and it can get out of hand,” sophomore Lily Mitchell said.
Each hall pass is different for each class, but they each are an identifier to show that the student has permission to do what they are doing. Language arts teacher Jan Peterson wishes students would take responsibility and stay in class and teachers should help with that.
“I wish we didn’t have to have the hall passes,” Peterson said. “I just wish the students could be responsible and be where they are supposed to be… but where that clearly doesn’t happen I think it’s the teachers responsibility to keep the students where they are supposed to be.”
About 25 percent of the students at NS use the hall passes given to them. And there are a lot of teachers that make the students use them.
Hall pass use has helped to keep students where they are supposed to be and to help keep them from sneaking out of class. Although not all students will be stopped by the hall passes, some students will continue to skip no matter what.
“The vast majority of our students are really good students and they actually follow our rules,” Syme said. “It’s unfortunate that we have to impose these kind of rules just because of the actions of a few, but our students are really good students.”
