The School District of Philadelphia will make a digital hall pass system available at all 249 of its campuses for the 2026-27 school year. The system runs through Infinite Campus, the student information system the district already uses for attendance, grading, and enrollment. It is the first time the technology will be offered districtwide, though principals can choose whether to adopt it.
Students request to leave class using district-issued Chromebooks. Once a teacher approves, the student's movement is logged on a "hall monitor grid" visible to administrators and climate staff. Staff can digitally restrict students from certain areas of a building or prevent students who are in conflict from being in the hallways at the same time. The district cites Philadelphia police data showing an average of about 550 assault incidents on school campuses each year from 2021 to 2025 as a reason for the tool.
How the system works
The digital hall pass is part of the Infinite Campus platform, which the district's SIS Help Desk page lists as the system for attendance, scheduling, grading, enrollment, health records, discipline reporting, and multi-tiered support (MTSS). The hall pass module includes a "restricted group" feature: if a student in a restricted group receives a pass, other students in that group show a red "R" and cannot be issued a pass until the first student's pass ends. The pass remains active even after its time expires, to prevent other students from getting passes due to limits.
An assistant principal at Abraham Lincoln High School who was trained on the software said the system tracks which students are out of the classroom, where they should be, and what time they left and returned. The president of Local 634, the union representing Philadelphia school climate staff, said the technology could hinder safety workers, noting that fights can start quickly and that staff watching tablets may miss early signs.
Other districts, similar questions
Philadelphia's districtwide rollout follows similar efforts in other large districts. New York City has deployed SmartPass digital hall passes in 167 public schools. The system tracks how long students are gone, keeps a running tally of missed class time, and can limit how many students are in the hallway at once. The New York City education department said the program is vetted for privacy, no school is required to adopt it, and it spent $368,000 on SmartPass contracts in 2025 and $120,000 the prior year.
In Beaverton, Oregon, a parent sued the school district over its digital hall pass system, which operates through the Synergy student information system. The parent alleged the system functioned as a behavioral monitoring tool with indefinite data retention, that at least 154 staff members had access to his daughter's data, and that the district used pass data to flag students for counseling without parental notice. A federal judge denied the parent's motion for a temporary restraining order. The parent also filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). A district principal stated in court filings that the system increased class attendance and decreased behavioral problems.
Some individual Philadelphia-area campuses have used similar digital hall pass technology before, but the 2026-27 school year is the first time such a system will be available to all schools in the district.
What the evidence says
Research evidence on digital hall passes is mixed and largely comes from vendor claims, litigation filings, and privacy advocates. Cobun Zweifel-Keegan, a data privacy lawyer and managing director of the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP), said digital hall passes offer proven safety benefits including accountability and central tracking that paper systems lack, but raised concerns about data minimization, vendor use of collected data, and the normalization of surveillance for students. He urged districts to verify vendors commit to using data only for serving the school, comply with FERPA and the Student Privacy Pledge, and implement multifactor authentication and encryption.
A principal at Mountain View Middle School in Beaverton, Oregon stated in a sworn court declaration that the digital pass system's primary goal was increasing student safety and reported that it increased class attendance and decreased behavioral problems. That claim is a self-reported district statement in litigation, not an independent evaluation.
The New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) has criticized similar systems. Johanna Miller, the NYCLU's director of education policy, said SmartPass creates a permanent record of student behavior that could be exploited, hacked, or used against students in the future. Charlotte Pope, an NYCLU Equal Justice Works Fellow, said the systems give private companies access to sensitive student data, increase punitive discipline, and worsen the school-to-prison pipeline.
Vendors dispute the surveillance characterization. SmartPass, the vendor used in New York City, states on its parent-facing page that it does not use GPS tracking or track individual student locations, is FERPA, COPPA, and SDPC compliant, and does not sell student or school data. The company claims over 2,500 K-12 schools use its product. Securly Pass, another digital hall pass vendor, claims it serves 12,000-plus schools and 8.6 million-plus students, does not use GPS or track physical location, uses only basic student data such as names and email addresses, and encrypts all data. Its system includes a "Contact Control" feature to prevent specific students from using hall passes at the same time.
Philadelphia's rollout is part of a broader package of safety measures, including expanded violence-reduction mentoring and a requirement that all school safety officers wear ballistic vests. The district has not said whether it will publish data on how the digital hall pass system is used or whether it will conduct an independent evaluation of its effects.