On January 7, Securly’s E-Pass was replaced by MINGA, a new digital system for hall passes that included sections where students could view their id’s, school announcements and track tardies and consequences.
Assistant principal Caleb Collins said that the change was meant to combine multiple systems into one and improve how students’ time outside of class was monitored.
“We needed to update and create a little bit better system for tracking tardies and tracking students’ out of class time,” Collins said.
The idea for the change was originally brought to the administration by an official from Mustang.
“We got to see a larger school, more similar to us, use it and see if they’re having success with it or not,” Collins said.
After the idea was introduced to the staff, Collins then became the main representative behind the change, attending live tech demos and training teachers on the new system.
“A lot of research went into it to decide if it was going to be a good move for Yukon,” Collins said.
Feedback on the system was mixed. Students, such as freshman Bella Hightower said that Minga worked faster than E-Hallpass.
“With the E-Hallpass it took a lot of loading,” Hightower said “Now it’s faster, because I can just go to Minga and create a pass.”
Hightower also used the new announcements tab during the winter assembly.
“That’s how I figured out when the schedule is,” Hightower said.
However, several students said that the change from teacher-based labels was confusing. With Minga, students entered passes to specific hallways instead of teachers.
“The new way they have it set up where it’s just names of the hallways, that’s way more confusing,” senior Sophie Edwards said. “It’s a pointless change.”
Some members of the staff also shared this sentiment.
“Some things are less user-friendly,” English teacher Dusty Crabtree said. “Like not being able to make passes to individual teachers and having to know what hallway they are in.”
Collins agreed that there were changes to be made and accepted feedback from many students in the hallways.
“I don’t know if I would call them problems as much as it is learning curves,” Collins said.
