Associate Principals Lea Smith and Phaedra Hofmann, adopted Minga as a measure for managing time spent out of class toward their goal of increasing student accountability. There was no way of measuring this behavior over time and no indicator for hallway monitors or staff liaisons to identify when students were out of class for too long.
Merced High was seeing issues with students gathering in the restrooms during class as well as students returning to class after upwards of 10 minutes for a simple restroom break.
There was no accountability on the students when they returned to class late and more so, no way of seeing which students were frequently abusing hall passes. If a student was excusing themselves every block for prolonged periods of time there was no way staff could communicate and make that connection.
Merced has a hybrid approach to self assigned hall passes. If teachers have a no phone policy they assign the pass, if not the student is able to assign their own hall pass. Hall monitors can see all active passes from a live dashboard where they can send students with expired passes back to class or make sure students without their phone are permitted to be out of class.
Associate Principal Phaedra remarks that teaching students how to be accountable with their time spent out of class has been enabled by the launch of Digital Hall Passes. They are seeing no more restroom hangouts, as live hall pass timers drive students back to class effectively. If a student fails to make it back to class before their timer runs out, a campus liaison will see it on the central hall pass dashboard or can ask a late student to see their hall pass and then send them back to class.
