A new electronic hall pass tracking system will debut soon in Jim Thorpe Area School District following board approval Wednesday night. Officials said the system will address problems with students wandering hallways during class time.

The board voted unanimously to implement SmartPass, a digital monitoring system for students in grades six through 12 at the high school and both elementary schools — LB Morris and Penn Kidder. The system will cost $1,710 and run from January through June 2026, funded through Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency school safety and mental health grants.

“We do have some problems with students who will leave classes and wander the halls,” Superintendent Robert Presley told the board. “This is a system that we would use for student accountability and tracking our students.”

The new system will require students to electronically sign in when requesting a bathroom pass. SmartPass will track which students are out of class and automatically sign them back in when they return.

Administrators will be able to set limits on how many students can be out at one time. Once that limit is reached, additional students will have to wait until someone returns and checks back in.

The system includes additional features to prevent groups of students from congregating in hallways or bathrooms. Administrators can designate certain students as a group in the system, preventing any of those students from being out of class at the same time.

“If we have problems with students that want to go hang out in the bathroom — which never happens, right? — but if it did, and we knew those groups of students, we could also put them as a group, and then none of those students could be out at the same time,” Presley said. “So there are a lot of benefits to this.”

According to the quote from SmartPass Inc., the district will pay $1.90 per student for 900 students.