With the 2024-25 school year already well underway, Oakland Tech has been preparing to roll out a new campus management system called “Minga.” Minga will be used as an online hall pass system to manage the amount of time students spend out of class. The digital system does not track students through their personal phones, but alerts Culture Keepers, the on-campus security, about student activity. The system will limit and log reasons for students’ time outside of class.
“We’re going to roll [Minga] out slowly,” states Principle Price. “I’m not going to pay for technology and watch it not be used.”
The solution to the forgeable hall passes is pricey. According to Principal Price, the cost of Minga was estimated to be between $5,000 to $10,000, and was taken from the school’s discretionary budget. The Oakland Unified School District is currently working on a grant for the implementation of Minga district-wide, so reimbursement for the big purchase is likely.
The paper hall pass system has long proved ineffective, urging a new solution. Students have been caught with wads of empty hall passes due to physical slips being easy to forge and collect. Last year, Culture Keepers became so overwhelmed by the amount of students in the halls that they stopped checking for hall passes all together. An interview with Principal Price and Assistant Principal Bachicha revealed that the purchase of Minga was partially inspired by Fremont High School’s success with the program.
Principal Price mentioned that teachers who prefer the paper pass system will be able to continue using paper passes, but there will be a limited amount per teacher. They will be harder to forge as they are now laminated. The color of the passes will also change frequently. Likewise, passes on Minga can also be limited, so a teacher can only create a certain amount of passes per period.
There are concerns about the time it takes to create a digital pass. Compared to a paper hall pass that is readily available, the digital hall pass needs time to be logged on each teacher’s computer. Principal Price has addressed this concern by suggesting that each teacher have a designated “Minga chromebook.” Students can create their own passes, and all teachers have to do is give the final “OK” by hitting a button to create the pass.
Ms. Christina Ong, a computer science teacher at Oakland Tech, is optimistic about the implementation of Minga.
“It should bypass the necessity to write physical passes or get forged ones,” states Ms. Christina.
Despite this, Ms. Christina has reservations about functionality, as students and teachers alike will have to learn to adapt to an entirely new system.