Minga Case Study

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

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.

52%
decrease in time spent in hallways

2,753
hours of hallway time, accounted for

41,019
hall passes created, in 1 semester

About Merced High School

California icon

Students
1900

Grades
9-12

The Challenge 

Students Spending Too Much Time Out of Class and in the Hallways

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.

Key Problem Areas:

Lack of student accountability

Time spent out of class in the hallways

No information on how hall passes are being used

Unwanted student gatherings in the restrooms during class time

No data to tell if a student is abusing the hall pass system


Digital Hall Passes are working really well for us. We don’t have kids hanging out in the bathroom like they used to. Kids used to say “oh my teacher didn’t have a pass.” and now if they don’t have their Minga pass we send them back to class to get one so I think the accountability is working out really well.”

Stephanie Cowperthwaite, Campus Liaison
Merced Union High School

The Solution

Solving the Mystery of Student Accountability

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.

What Minga Offered

A digital hall pass system that:

Measures and reports on usage and trends

Increases hallway and campus safety

Allows for group or individual restrictions

Allow for custom pass types

Monitors passes from a live dashboard

Integrates with a digital student ID


Digital Hall Passes have changed the school a lot in terms of accountability. Last year we were using hard-copy hall passes, kids could be roaming around the entire period and we don’t know when the teacher released them so with Minga we can say no your pass expired 10 minutes ago, you need to go back to class.”

Phaedra Hofmann, Associate Principal
Merced Union High School

The Results

A Significant Decrease in Hallway Traffic

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.

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