Izzy W. At the beginning of the school year at The Mountain, a new tardy system was introduced through the Minga System. This required all students who were late to class to fill out a pass on one of the two computers downstairs or the single computer upstairs with their ID number. This automatically gave you a tardy and would text message the students' parents about it.
At the beginning of the school year teachers were chasing late students back down the hallway to fill out the pass, closing their doors the second that the bell rang and checking their computers to see if late students had filled out their passes to begin with.
When it was first started, there was an issue with students just skipping class to avoid getting detention because of their many tardies, since a detention was automatically given to students for every three tardies At one point there were so many students in Student Relations for detention that they didn’t have enough chairs to seat them all.
Now, in our second semester, we ask, is the Minga system still effective? A student here at the mountain agrees that the tension and “strictness” have gone down a little bit, “but [they] don’t see as many people getting a pass as [they] used to, and there are still a lot of people out in the hall the first maybe 5 minutes of class.”
As months go on it seems a lot of students don’t get hassled to fill one out as much as they used too, another student who is prone to being late agrees it’s not as strict anymore: “I use to just ditch if I was late but now I just kind of keep walking to class after the bell rings and nobody stops me and my teacher doesn’t even make me go fill one out.”
Some students even say that in the beginning, their teacher would make them go and get a pass and they thought it was pointless: “I was already in class but they made me leave and go get a pass, I ended up missing the first things we learned just to walk down the hall again to put in my ID number.” Another stated: “I was a second late because I was in the bathroom and they made me waste more time by leaving the class again.”
Some teachers also agreed with students, with one anonymously saying “It just faded. We started off so strong but I think that after winter break we need a reminder that it's still there. Otherwise, kids don’t take it seriously or even teachers."
Mr. Wimmer, a photo and business teacher, stated: “As a photo teacher that sends kids out in the halls for photos I still love it, it makes things a lot easier, but as for making attendance better I’m not really noticing a difference."
At the introduction, the Minga system seemed to be making a difference for the better. However, now that the dust has settled, it's clear that there are still some tweaks that are still needed for it to be effective all year long.