Your Guide to Minga: Passes, Points, and Perks
As the 2023-2024 school year begins, Leonia High School has begun to implement the app Minga into our daily life. It is an app designed to include all tools necessary to digitally enhance student and faculty life and security. For Leonia, the main goal of Minga is to not only make our school a safer place, but also to improve school culture.
In Leonia High School, Minga was introduced for three main reasons: student ID, hall passes, and the point system. The student ID feature on the app allows students to access their school ID directly from their phones. This feature is very important for new security protocols in our school as students tend to forget their IDs quite a bit, but now they will always have access to them via Minga.
The next feature is the hall pass feature which allows for staff to better monitor students outside of the classroom. With this feature students are able to make hall passes right from their phones and are monitored when they go anywhere in the school. Minga allows three hall passes a day and unlike previous years, students now have an additional two minutes to use the bathroom, which has taken the allowed time from 5 to 7 minutes.
Finally, one of the most important and exciting features is the point system. This allows for students to be rewarded points in a variety of ways. Wearing your ID, making an academic or behavioral effort, or doing random acts of kindness around the school are only a few of the ways that students can earn Minga points. The points are an added bonus to the app designed to give incentives for students to do good around the school and set them up to succeed. When receiving Minga points you can gain anywhere from 1-3 points depending on the action you have done and once you receive these points you can save them up and eventually turn them in for rewards. A few examples of rewards you can get include school apparel, snacks, other surprises, and even the ability to take away detentions. There will also be a competition between grade levels. When students earn points those points also go to their specific grade level and by the end of the year the grade with the most points will receive a group prize.
When asked how Minga will benefit our school, vice principal Mr. Servis replied, “Security will be better, the monitoring of hallways and bathrooms will improve, and points and rewards will influence students to do the right thing.”
Students and staff were also asked about their opinions on Minga. Minji Kim, a junior at Leonia High School, responded with, “Minga is a little confusing to navigate and work. Sometimes the app doesn’t work due to the bad wifi and it’s inconvenient to ask the teacher for them to have to stop the lesson and approve your pass.”
Liv Meester, another Junior, responded, “ I personally am not a fan of the app yet, however I see how it will benefit our school in the future. ”
English teacher Mr. Murphy-Park adds, “The app is good to keep students accountable.”
Minga is now an important part of our school and student and faculty life and will continue to be in order to keep our school a safe place.
