Hill Middle School leads innovation

From Dallas ISD Staff Reports

In one Dallas ISD school, raising your hand in class to request a hall pass is now a thing of the past.

At Robert T. Hill Middle School, under the leadership of Principal Candice Ruiz, commitment to innovation has transformed the campus into a safer and more focused learning environment.

“You have to take risks to get different results. So we try to take the risk,” said Ruiz.

This mentality led her to find ways to utilize leading-edge technology to increase safety, enhance student attentiveness, and give instructional time back to teachers.

EHall Pass, a digital alternative to traditional, physical hard passes, is an essential tool in that effort.

With a click of a few buttons on a student’s Chromebook, and little to no disruption to a teacher’s lesson, students can electronically request to step away from class.

The idea to move away from traditional hall passes was an idea brought to Ruiz by Assistant Principal David McDaniel. While the school already had a system in place, McDaniel offered a solution to the challenges posed by physical passes.

“Physical hall passes get lost a lot and it takes a lot of time to handwrite them,” he said. “Kids would take them to the restroom and lose them.”

The adoption of EHall Pass has not only become a more efficient process, but it is essential to the school’s strategy to enhance security.

“We know where all students are at all times,” said Ruiz. “It allows us to monitor and control student movement within the building and limit the number of students in the hallway at any given time.”

By restricting passes, teachers can proactively prevent certain students from crossing paths, offering a unique solution to bullying in unsupervised areas like restrooms.

The campus also adopted a phone-free culture to further alleviate disruptions in the classroom. Interruptions from text pings or phone rings are now obsolete with the use of advanced phone pouches.

At the beginning of each school day, students place their phones inside a secure pouch they carry with them until dismissal, ensuring distraction-free classrooms.

“If a student isn’t learning because they’re distracted, that’s a problem. A teacher’s time is valuable and I don’t want instruction to stop because of a cell phone,” said Ruiz.

The impact of being a phone-free campus has led to significant academic success.

STAAR results have improved over the past three years. There is a significant increase in the number of students at Meets and Masters performance levels. The Approach category improved from 49% in the 2020-2021 school year to 65% in the 2022-2023 school year, while the Meets category rose from 22% to 35% during the same period.

Although change can be challenging, the incorporation of new technology garnered strong support from parents. The school’s Parent Teacher Association advocated for its adoption at Bryan Adams High School Leadership Academy, the legacy school for Robert T. Hill students.

“Parents definitely gravitated towards stronger systems for safety. They want to see us take these steps to keep their children safe,” said Ruiz.

Ruiz remains committed to being a trailblazer in Dallas ISD, ready to raise her hand to try the next innovation to further enhance her campus.

“I don’t know what the next thing (innovation) is, but I don’t think our work as educators is ever done. There’s always room for improvement. We tell our kids we want them to be trailblazers so it’s important that we set the standard,” said Ruiz.