By Noah Corman

The administration is under scrutiny for its prioritizing of important school issues. Of late, the school
has focused its attention on misplaced and stolen hall passes while other school matters—such as
academics—have taken a back seat.

“My AP World class has a long-term substitute, and we’re worried we won’t be learning enough to be
prepared for the exam in May. We set up a meeting with administration, but it ended abruptly when
they had to chase down someone with a fake hall pass,” said junior Jacob Wilson.

Students allegedly are forging hall passes or stealing actual ones, allowing them to walk around the
hallways all day without going to class. There are even rumors of students buying and selling them in a
hall pass black market. The school leadership team is pledging to take another look at the hall pass
policy and possibly launch an investigation.

“You can’t put a price tag on walking aimlessly through the halls, said one student, who prefers to
remain anonymous. “With that being said, hall passes are selling for about five dollars, but that price
may go up due to inflation, or something like that. I’m not too sure how it works. I’d pay attention in
economics, but I don’t need to because I have a hall pass.”

Due to the theft of hall passes that have plagued the school, many classrooms must do without them.
Teachers of double-period classes are concerned that their students have no passes for going to the
bathroom, so they have to hold it in for almost two hours.
“It’s really starting to affect our productivity. Many of our students have to go so badly that they can’t
focus in class or complete labs,” said one science teacher.

Security has now added two more members to its staff in an attempt to get to the bottom of the hall
pass dilemma. Team members recently attended a workshop that trained them on how to identify
counterfeit hall passes.

“Sometimes I feel like they’re just not getting around to the more important school problems,”
complained a teacher about the school’s handling of certain affairs. “My department needs more
funding to avoid laying off teachers or dropping courses, and the administration has no funding left for
us. They said they spent it all on investigators and replacing stolen hall passes.”
The administration has scheduled an emergency professional day to discuss changes to the policy.
Absences and tardies have increased by 200 percent, and the administration feels they need to address
this as soon as possible.

“The logical next step is to just get rid of hallways. I haven’t really considered the logistics of such a plan,
but you can’t wander through the hallways if there are no hallways,” declared a member of the school
leadership team who was not authorized to speak on the record.