HOWLAND — The Howland Board of Education heard updates on a school’s new hall-pass program, which is entering its second year.

At this week’s regular board meeting, Howland Junior High School principal James Kosek presented data from the 2024-25 school year obtained from SmartPass, a digital hall pass and student accountability program also used by the high school.

In the months tracked by the program — September 2024 through April 11, 2025 — more than 41,000 passes were issued across two grade levels, Kosek said.

“So when you think about that, we kind of looked at it; we can break that down per student — we’re able to see which students are in maybe the top 5%, the top 10%,” Kosek said. “How many minutes, how many hours they’re missing. So it really helps us have conversations with the parents about their students.”

Kosek said school officials made changes for the school year based on the numbers, noting that Howland last year had a weekly average of 2.4 passes per student — compared to the 2.1 of other Ohio SmartPass schools and 2.2 for other SmartPass schools across the country.

Kosek said numbers like that have led to realizations about issuing fewer SmartPasses and questions about why so many are being issued.

In terms of how long kids are staying out of class, however, Kosek said the school averages 19.4 minutes compared to Ohio schools at 25.1 minutes and countrywide SmartPass schools at 25.5 minutes.

“That means our kids are getting back to us quickly; they’re not out in the halls goofing around, or lost, or roaming the halls or skipping class,” Kosek said. “It definitely tells us our kids are using it responsibly — which is what we would want, and it’s showing us accountability.”

Kosek said they started last year with three passes per day for students, reducing it to two after realizing three were too many.

Kosek said he wished he could show the board the number of encounters prevented, explaining that SmartPass has a system that allows him or an administrator to manually keep multiple students apart to address concerns of bullying, harassment or causing trouble together.

“The system actually will detect students who are getting together at the same place, same time, that you might not even be aware of,” Kosek said. “You can immediately put an encounter prevention in place, because why are they meeting up so often at the same place, at the same time?”

Kosek said they have 81 students in groups and have stopped almost 5,000 encounters that could have resulted in negative outcomes.

As for the program’s cost, Howland High School principal Joseph Simko said the schools have traded “one cost for another”.

“It essentially paid for itself, because we used to have passbook planners; we don’t do planners anymore because of this system,” Simko said.

Simko said if there’s an emergency, they can put the entire building on a freeze by shutting the program down, holding the students and keeping the classrooms clear.

“We used to spend about $3,500 on planners that then would end up all over the place,” Kosek said. “It was such a waste; it wasn’t used properly, and it was a waste of money. This is used properly, and it’s money well-spent.”