It’s a new school year, and yet again the school decided to switch hall passes and flex programs, relearning new things students already learned a year or two before. Why does this keep happening?
During the 2023-24 school year, the De Pere School District utilized Edficiency for its flex period and SmartPass for instances when a student needed to leave the classroom. This applied to junior high and high school students.
On Feb. 1, 2024, the education company for students in grades K through 12, Securly, bought the flex period website Edficiency and made it into its own app. Then, in 2024-25, the De Pere School District switched to using the new Securly-bought Edficiency — re-titled as “Securly Flex” — as well as switching over to use Securly’s version of SmartPass titled “Securly Pass”.
About a month into 2024-25, the school switched back to Edficiency but kept using Securly Pass.
Then, in 2025-26, the district switched again and is now using Securly Flex and SmartPass.
“It seemed more like they [students and teachers] found SmartPass easier to use, so we switched back,” said Mr. Thielhelm, the vice principal.
Jonas Campbell, a senior, noted that it gets really frustrating when, at the beginning of the year, teachers have to spend 50 minutes explaining a new program to every student.
Instead, the students have to relearn how to use a program they used 2 years ago.
But while using Securly, students have to log in every single time they want to use it, and, according to Campbell, “It’s dumb, it could be fixed so easily with a software update.”
So far, the flex and hall pass programs have been both positive and negative.
Securly has been slower than the average website, making usage and logging in take a lot more time.
For Edficiency, the user interface compared to Securly Flex is a lot easier to use, Mr. Thielhelm said.
Most of the features from Edficiency were not fully transferred over to Securly’s version when it was bought out.
“At the moment, Edficiency was the better program. But with the right improvements, Securly Flex could be just as good, if not better than Edficiency,” Mr. Thielhelm said.
Most of the student and teacher responses are negative towards Securly and positive response towards Edficiency and SmartPass, Mr. Thielhelm said.
Regarding Efficiency, like stated before, it was bought by Securly and was stopped from being used this year. Last year, the I.T. Department had a choice between using Securly Flex and Edficiency, according to Mr Thielhelm, and they went with Edficiency based on feedback. Edficiency is no longer being funded by Securly, basically making the website extinct.
But switching for the hall passes really comes down to preference. Mr. Thielhelm also said that the district changed back to SmartPass based on student and teacher reactions.
Taylor Eason • Sep 25, 2025 at 11:31 am
I am very neutral about the new system, I am getting to like the new flex system for the calendar aspects and I don’t have to search for the date I wanted unlike Edficiency. As for the securely pass, I absolutely hated it. Why did teachers have to cancel a pass, on multiple occasions I had teachers forget to cancel the pass.