With a new school year starting amidst the pandemic, LAUSD has enforced many new regulations in order to make in-person learning as “safe as possible.” One of these regulations has been the installment of the LAUSD Daily Pass which requires students to get tested for Covid-19 at least once every two weeks and gives students a daily pass to get into school every day. Although this seems like an effective method to keep schools safer, there is much uncertainty surrounding it. 

People like students and teachers who attend the school daily give their thoughts on the current Covid situation, the daily pass, and how the school has been in regards to safety. They mention easy in which the daily pass has been beneficial but also voice concerns in regards to how the school is treating the Covid 19 guidelines and how their health can be better protected. 

“The application seems to work for me really well” said Mr.Hill, who is currently an English teacher for the SAS at the school. He seemed to be in favor of the daily pass application for the most part. He believes that it is an effective system and is very easy to use. He mentioned that he has been using it before most students, and has had no issues with the app.

When asked about how easy it is for students to enter the school without a valid daily pass, he stated “ The security is not that tight but that is not the fault of the application.” He stated that the application does what it is meant to do and it does the job well. He mentioned that the application has no control over students getting into the school when they are not supposed to and that seems to stem into an issue with security and not the daily pass. 

Since the people who check out daily passes every morning are staff members, Mr.Hill states that “When there is a human element there are flaws.” With the morning being extremely busy with thousands of students trying to get into school, it is inevitable that certain students who are not supposed to be in school can easily sneak in. This hints to the fact that security might need to be ramped up in regards to checking daily passes and letting students in. 

After a conversation with Shalmai Lopez who is a student at North Hollywood High School, she stated that “ I think the security could be improved because in my brother’s school they actually scan the daily pass unlike here they just glance at it.” Shalmai voices her concerns about how fast the daily pass is checked and mentions that she is concerned with the daily pass not actually being scanned making it easy for students to sneak in without a valid daily pass. 

“The daily pass should be taken with more caution because  letting a student in that could have Covid 19 would put everyone at risk at school”, Shalmai stated, emphasizing how concerned she is with the fact that certain students can sneak in with no difficulty. In the events of this happening, so many students would be put at risk of catching the disease. 

When asked about what she thinks should be done in order to improve the problem, she suggested that “I believe the security here should start scanning the daily pass even if it takes a long time. Maybe opening another gate would be helpful to move things faster.” She stated that although the line to get into school on the first day was very long, it was much more secure and seemed like our well being was taken more seriously. 

When asked about the daily pass, another student, Somara Oliva, stated “it is extremely easy to use but sometimes it shuts down making it hard to access what we need in order to enter school.” She proceeded to say that besides that, it serves its function well and makes it extremely easy to check our weekly Covid results as well. 

It seemed like Somara was concerned about  the security of getting students into school as well when she stated “they simply glance at the phone and let me in” implying that not much attention is paid to the daily pass. She stated that she also believes that security should be heightened in order to make sure all students are safe at school. 

From these few discussions, it seems like most believe that there is not much of a problem with the daily pass itself but there is a need for improvement in regards to security within the school. The daily pass needs to be more closely examined and maybe even scanned to make sure only students who are allowed to be on campus are on campus.