Jeffrey Myers, who has an information technology background and by day works in sales operations for the technology company Cohesity, is representing himself in the federal lawsuit.
He alleges the district’s digital hall pass system infringes on parental privacy and due process rights. He has a 13-year-old daughter at Mountain View Middle School.
Myers said he’s not opposed to digital innovations but said he’s concerned administrators use the digital passes to “flag students” for potential interventions without parents “ever being told this is happening.”
“This is not simply a digitized system of a paper pass,” he argued Thursday before U.S. District Judge Adrienne Nelson in Portland. “It’s a behavioral monitoring system that stores details of human movements and uses those to identify perceived psychological patterns.”
The district tried out the digital system in a pilot program at Whitford Middle School in 2024 and then expanded it to some of its nine middle schools.
Attorney Erin M. Burris, representing the district, said digital hall passes were adopted to make it easier for students to request passes and get a teacher’s approval and for schools to reduce the time students spend in the halls or outside of class.
It’s operated through the Synergy school information system, an online data system that already tracks class schedules, grades, course assignments and attendance.
“It’s not a GPS-tracking device or anything that shows where students are going,” Burris said. “It’s an honor system to provide structure and accountability for students … and for convenience for teachers to know where their students are if they haven’t returned for a period of time.”
Use of the traditional paper hall passes varied from teacher to teacher and afforded no way for staff to monitor how often a student sought a pass out of class, Mountain View Middle School Principal Brian Peerenboom wrote in a sworn declaration. Teachers were unaware of how many other students in their class, or which students, were out of class at a given time, he said.
As a result, large groups of students would gather in hallways or other communal spaces during class time, sometimes leading to problems and vandalism to school property, he said.
Mountain View Middle School’s primary goal in adopting the digital pass system in December 2024 was to increase student safety on campus, he said.
Teachers access the system using a laptop or iPad, and students use a district-provided laptop to request a pass. The student requests to leave a class and cites the reason or destination, such as the bathroom, their locker, the front office or the health room.
When a teacher grants the pass, all teachers can monitor the frequency and length of time that students are out of class, according to the district’s court filings. Students get between 4 and 10 minutes to leave the classroom, depending on the destination.
The system limits the total number of students who may be out of class at one time in each of the destination categories.
Teachers also can restrict specific students — such as those who frequently meet up during class time or are known for having run-ins — from receiving passes to the same places at the same time, even if they’re in different classes.
Peerenboom said no students have been disciplined for failing to return to class within the restricted time.
He said he’s not received any other complaints about the system from staff, students or parents. He praised its benefits, saying it has increased class attendance and decreased behavioral problems between students.
“Additionally, from time-to-time, teachers and administrators have identified trends of individual students who frequently request to leave class, which enables MVMS to look for ways to support those students to increase their educational engagement,” he said.
Myers said his main concern is that the district, in its own written material and responses, has acknowledged that a wide range of staff have access to the student pass data — from office assistants to other teachers to nurses from other schools who do not have a legitimate, educational interest in a student.
The district also has indicated that it uses the electronic hall passes for possible “behavioral” interventions like counseling or to identify potential psychological concerns, he said.
“Once a system is used to initiate health-based responses or label students for further intervention, it exceeds the bounds of administrative recordkeeping and enters a domain requiring notice, consent, and constitutional protections,” he wrote in a court filing.
At the hearing, he argued, “I get texts if my kid’s late to school or is tardy to class, but if my kid misses math class every day — 30 minutes a day — because she’s using hall passes to keep taking mental breaks, I’m not made aware,” he said.
Myers asked for a court-ordered “pause” in the use of Beaverton’s digital hall passes through a temporary restraining order.
School districts, Burris countered, are obligated to monitor students’ whereabouts in their buildings and a parent doesn’t have the right to direct the administrative operations of a school district, “which the hall pass most certainly is.”
The judge denied Myers’ motion to pause use of the pass at this stage in his lawsuit.
Nelson pointed out that school isn’t in session currently and the district has said the passes aren’t in use during summer school. Nelson also noted that Myers’ daughter hasn’t been the subject of any hall pass interventions.
Myers said his daughter had a visit with a school counselor, but he didn’t know if it was triggered by a review of her hall pass usage.
Myers separately has filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education, alleging violations of the Family Educational Rights Privacy Act. He argues the district is compiling students’ movement and behavioral data that’s not visible to parents, retained indefinitely and used to trigger medical and psychological inferences without family input.
While his suit remains pending in court, Nelson signaled that his complaint to the federal education department “seems to be the more appropriate path for all of your raised issues.”
Other districts have adopted digital hall passes. They’re used in Lincoln, Nebraska, and at 21 schools across Oklahoma.
In February, Sandpoint High School in Sandpoint, Idaho, held an informational session for parents as it announced its plan to use a digital hall pass for the remainder of the school year through the company SmartPass. During that session, some parents expressed concerns about the risk of data exposures and impact on students’ sense of trust.
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