In light of the new school year, new school policies and rules have come into place at Elmwood Park High School. The use of the SmartPass system is one of them. Students interact with a new electronic program that acts as their new hall pass, instead of getting traditional paper passes. With email instructions coming out a week before school started, students were wondering “What is ‘SmartPass’ anyways?”

Initially created by two high school seniors, Peter Luba and Dhruv Sringari, the aim of the program was to help their assistant principal manage their schools’ hallways. Now, it’s become a program used by schools all over the country, especially after being acquired by Raptor Technologies, a company aiming to improve school safety. The system has students create a pass whenever they need to leave the classroom. An allotted time is set for certain destinations, usually being 5 minutes to go to the bathroom, locker, etc.  There are also a certain number of passes a student can use a day, with each student getting 5 passes to use with a 45 minute cooldown between passes.

All staff in the building can access SmartPass to see which students are in the hallway, as well as schedule passes for them in the future to meet with teachers. SmartPass aims to “make easy-to-use tools so school staff can focus on  learning, not logistics” and claims to “increase safety to ensure everyone can focus on learning instead of logistics”. EPHS is one of the newest schools to be added to their over 3,000 users nationwide.

The beginning of the 2025-2026 school year brought SmartPass to the computers and hallways of EPHS. I interviewed the head of the SmartPass system at the high school, Dean of Students Michaela Vasey, to see how the school is doing with the new system. The original idea to implement it came from some of the school’s new administration, who have used it in the past. She explained that SmartPass has improved safety by keeping track of students and reducing the number of students in the hallways. While it is only being used at the high school this year, she states that its success may warrant the district to consider expanding its use to the other schools that make up District 401.

The feedback she has gotten so far has been mostly positive, with staff and even students liking the new system. Although it caused some frustration among staff because of early glitches and students not being used to the new policy, the overall acceptance of the system throughout the building has been generally good. Ms. Vasey personally supports SmartPass, saying “I think it works really well with teachers. It’s a little bit more challenging for our student services team, but I think as we keep using it it’ll be successful in all areas.” Overall, the system seems to be working well at EPHS and will be used for the foreseeable future.

Students have mixed feelings about the new system. Many say that they like the new passes, like Landon Arreola, a senior. “I believe that everything is way more organized. It also makes people come back from the bathroom quicker so I can go,”  he says. Tessa LaRocco, a junior, says she doesn’t mind using SmartPass, and that she always makes it back on time so it isn’t an issue for her. Some students, on the other hand, don’t like SmartPass.  Meredith Brayton, a senior, said, “The limited pass time is difficult sometimes.”

SmartPass has quickly become an important part of life at EPHS. With staff and students adjusting well to the new system, hallways have become safer and more organized. As the year progresses, EPHS may lead the path to SmartPass starting in other schools as well.

Works Cited

About Us. (2018). Smartpass.app. https://www.smartpass.app/about 

Arreola, L. (2025, September 18). [Interview by M. Brilyak].

Brayton, M. (2025, September 18). [Interview by M. Brilyak].

Brilyak, M. (2025a). SmartPass Home Screen.

Brilyak, M. (2025b). SmartPass Display.

Gutierrez, A. (2024, December 10). Raptor Technologies Acquires SmartPass. Raptor Technologies®. https://raptortech.com/resources/news/raptor-technologies-acquires-smartpass/ 

Larocco, T. (2025, September 18). [Interview by M. Brilyak].

Schooled in Safety: Peter Luba ’22 Co-Founded Successful SmartPass App. (2025, April 11). Lehigh University News. https://news.lehigh.edu/schooled-in-safety-peter-luba-22-co-founded-successful-smartpass-app 

Technologies, R. (2024). SmartPass Logo.

Vasey, M. (2025, September 12). [Interview by M. Brilyak].