Once students at Colonia High School received their ID’s, new bathroom procedures were set in place requiring students to scan in and out when using the facilities. Students arriving late to school will also have to scan into the building.

Students were distributed IDs during homeroom at the start of the school year with a barcode at the bottom right hand corner. IDs must be used to scan in and scan out of the bathrooms, the Nurse’s office, and when arriving late to school.

Instead of every bathroom being open, like they were in previous years, only one or two out of the five bathrooms are open at a time. During block one, the business wing bathroom is open, block two has two bathrooms open in the world language and the math wing, block three has one bathroom open in the business wing, and during fourth block two bathrooms are open in the world language and math wing.

It is rumored that bathrooms are closed so that they can be cleaned throughout the duration of the school day. Also, the bathrooms might be closed because there aren’t enough male and female staff members to be on bathroom duty for the five bathrooms throughout the day.

When asked what the initial purpose behind the scanning systems being installed was, Mr. Pace confirmed that it was “to make it go faster.”  This way a student can be in and out without having to sign the sign-in sheet and create a line.

Teachers that are on bathroom duty are using Genesis to track students when their IDs are scanned. This procedure will also reduce hall roaming as much as possible. That way, if the time on their pass does not match up with the time that they scanned out of the bathroom, disciplinary action will take place.

“It’s all logged into Genesis, to know how long someone was in the bathroom for and how long it took them to get from the classroom to the bathroom and back.” explained Pace.

In a poll conducted of 30 students at Colonia High, 5 out of 30 students said that they liked the new ID scanning systems. Twenty-five, however, said they did not like the new ID scanning systems.

Senior Mariah Arrue complained, “It’s much less efficient. I’m not a ‘regular’ bathroom user in school, but when I need to use it there’s always a huge line.”

However, with all of the technology taking the school over, it’s common to wonder what would happen if the systems were to crash. The school has that covered. Over the summer the school took extra precautions to make sure that in the event that something of that nature happens, the school would transfer back to paper passes for the time being until the systems up and coming.

Already in effect is the scanning system sign in for students that are late to school. They’re to scan their IDs and it prints a receipt-like pass for the student. If you lost your ID or didn’t receive one yet, your ID from last year is valid to use at the bathrooms.; the IDs from last year have barcodes on them just like the new ones.

“Scanning students into the bathroom is fairly easy when students remember to bring their IDs to school. When a student doesn’t have an ID, we have to search for their name in the system which prevents others students from scanning in while we are searching. As more and more students start bringing their IDs, this should be a very effective system,” noted Miss Danielle Simkovich, English Teacher on bathroom duty during lunch.