How Student Accountability Skyrocketed after Merced High Implemented Minga’s Digital Hall Passes

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. Associate Principal Phaedra Hofmann explained that students would grab a physical hall pass and “roam the halls the entire period” because staff would have no way of telling when they originally left their class.

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.

Minga Hall Passes include a live timer, which motivates students to return to class on time.

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.

Because of the data that Merced receives from Minga, they were able to see which students might be abusing their hall pass time, and were able to set daily limits for those students, considering they don’t have any special requirements that would justify additional hallway time.

Within 3 months of using Minga’s Digital Hall Passes, Merced Union High saw a significant decrease in hallway traffic during class time.

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.

Merced now has information on how long students are spending outside of the classroom and the reasons behind it, which has really brought forth student personal responsibility. Even just having the timer on the student ID that they can see gives them incentive to return on time and keeps them from abusing the pass. This teaches students time management and creates a digital hall pass footprint where admin can see which students may need more attention.