Encased in their custom plastic frames, the SchoolPass attendance tablets in each Ransom Everglades classroom have largely faded into the background, no longer generating as much commentary among students as the system heads into its second year of operation.
Most elements of the system have remained the same for the 2023-2024 school year, with one exception: RE has removed the iPads out front that students used to use for morning check-in. That change can be attributed to the new schedule. RE’s Chief Technology Officer Mrs. Linda Lawrence said that “because the schedule changed, you have advisory right when students come on campus so if students scan in during advisory, we know they are safe and on campus.”
Behind the scenes, however, SchoolPass has seen some much more significant changes. On April 25, SchoolPass Incorporated was acquired by Raptor Technologies in a $99 million transaction when the company’s previous majority investor, Level Equity, backed out and ushered in Raptor in their place. As a result, RE’s emergency management system has been overhauled and replaced with Raptor’s app. With the unusual number of fire alarms—even two in one day—that have been triggered this fall semester, faculty and school leadership have gotten several opportunities to use the Raptor system and determine whether it succeeds SchoolPass in quality.
With no rebranding or news present on the SchoolPass app that students use, many students said they didn’t know about the Raptor deal. “I had no idea SchoolPass had been bought, let alone by a dinosaur,” said David Martinez ’25. Raptor Technologies, however, is not a dinosaur. Instead, it’s a company founded in 2002 with the mission of “protecting every child, every school, every day.” Raptor deals in integrated school safety software for K-12 schools. In fact, RE has worked with Raptor before. According to Mrs. Lawrence, “Ransom used Raptor for visitor management before COVID. We went to SchoolPass during COVID because of the wellness checks,” and now “we’re returning to Raptor Technologies.”
Replacing last year’s SchoolPass app, Raptor StudentSafe is the new emergency management software that teachers and faculty use during fire drills, lockdowns, and all other emergencies to keep track of students. Now that the school has gone through both a fire drill and a lockdown drill, the app has been used in the two primary situations in which it would be called upon, and there’s ample feedback from both teachers and students.
Responses to this system have been mixed. English teacher Ms. Kira Morgan found that “I do think there are still too many steps to get to the check-in process. I worry that in a real emergency that it would be difficult.” Camille Lugo ’24 also expressed concern about how much time it takes for teachers to mark students accounted for. “I’ve seen a bunch of teachers just scramble around trying to sign people in,” she said. “It’s kind of a mess. The drill ends before everyone’s been signed in, usually.”
According to Mrs. Lawrence, improvements are in the works. “After every drill that we have, we survey teachers for feedback: What did you find? what did you need to work on?” she said. Mrs. Lawrence also noted that the feedback she has received from teachers has been positive overall, especially when compared to the previous SchoolPass app. “People are coming back and they’re saying, ‘We like this one better’ than SchoolPass,” she said.
With Raptor now at the helm, what could students and faculty expect in the upcoming year? The move from SchoolPass to Raptor is a “two-year transition,” said Mrs. Lawrence. “This year was the emergency management. Right away our Director of Security (Mr. Robert DePriest ’86) evaluated Raptor along with us, and we decided it was probably a better product for counting individuals in an emergency. Next year, we will see the attendance scanners being brought into that. In addition to accounting for students, we’ll be able to see the attendance during an emergency. Visitor management will be coming along in that same timeframe.”
Students like Hudson Kaplan ’25 have their own suggestions for some changes. “I think it’s better for teachers to take attendance at the start of class with rollcall or something,” Kaplan suggested. He also highlighted potential issues with the current system, saying, “I think as a system SchoolPass is important, but I feel like the way it’s implemented in our school is inconvenient because often times the iPad is dead or broken, so you can’t sign in and you get random tardies that you have to clear.”
“Our school is working with the vendor to try and make things more efficient,” said Mrs. Lawrence, who noted that, to put the timeline into perspective, RE is only about a quarter of the way through the estimated two-year transition. Mrs. Lawrence said that we can expect big changes to the system before it’s fully implemented, as well as the introduction of new elements of the Raptor ecosystem.
