The $310,000 warning sign Texas schools keep missing in the absenteeism fight. October 23, 2026, 23:17 GMT New data from Texas principals shows tardiness outpacing every behavior challenge, as SB 991 raises the cost of missing early warning signs. TX, UNITED STATES, October 23, 2026 / EINPresswire.com / - New data from Minga, the Student Behavior & Engagement Platform used by 2,500+ schools nationwide, shows tardiness has become the top student behavior challenge among Texas principals and a direct predictor of the chronic absenteeism now carrying a legal and financial cost under Texas Senate Bill 991. Texas public schools are heading into 2026-27 under real pressure. Enrollment dropped by more than 76,000 students in 2025-26, the largest non-pandemic decline in recorded state history. Under SB 991, chronic absenteeism now triggers mandatory intervention, and the state's basic allotment of $6,215 per student is tied directly to whether students are in their seats. For a campus of 1,000 students, the difference between 90% and 95% attendance is a funding gap of roughly $310,000 a year. At the TASSP Summer Workshop 2026, Minga surveyed Texas secondary school principals on their biggest behavior challenges. Tardiness ranked first, and attendance ranked second, with more than double the responses in every other category combined. Hallway loitering followed closely behind. The pattern isn't unique to Texas: across four national conferences in 2026, attendance and tardiness led the conversation everywhere. But SB 991 has turned attendance from a cultural priority into a legal obligation. "Tardies and hallway loitering are not just daily frustrations," said Jason Richards, CEO of Minga. "They are leading indicators of absenteeism. Texas principals are not managing crises. They are managing quiet departures, students drifting one period at a time, until the data finally catches up." The warning signs are already visible. They just aren't in the absence data yet. The problem is not the students. It is the system. In a national survey of school leaders, the top answer for their biggest tardy challenge, cited by 37% of respondents, was the absence of a consistent tardy policy. Different rules in different classrooms, applied differently by different teachers. When students learn that being late carries no real consequence, the drift toward chronic absenteeism follows, and under SB 991 that drift now carries a compliance cost. Nearly half of Texas principals in the TASSP survey described their approach as prevention-focused, but prevention only works if it is consistent, and consistency requires systems, not spreadsheets. Chris Bryant, Principal at Midland Lee High School in Texas, saw that gap firsthand. Before Minga, his school tracked tardies in a Google Sheet, and administrators weren't notified until a student hit three tardies to a single teacher. "We were missing that student accountability piece. It just became an overwhelming daily headache," Bryant said. Since putting a consistent policy in place: "We had zero tardies after lunch, which is a big deal at a school with an open campus lunch program. Students pushed back at first, but now they've bought in, because they're also earning recognition for good behavior." It's not just a Texas problem. Further west, Oklahoma principals are watching the same thing unfold. Dr. Kathy Knowles, Head Principal at Mustang High School in Oklahoma, leads a campus of 4,000 students. Getting hallways and tardies under control was the first priority. "The teachers were happy. We were happy. Kids were getting to class," Knowles said of the initial shift. Adding recognition on top: "I have been shocked by how excited these kids are to earn points and rewards. It has changed our culture." Under SB 991, Texas principals need to know which students are trending toward chronic absenteeism before they get there. The data from TASSP 2026 suggests most schools already know where to look: the students arriving late, drifting into hallways, missing one period at a time. The schools that act on those signals are the ones that keep their students, their funding, and their community. ABOUT MINGA Minga is an educational partner and unified platform designed to help K-12 schools streamline their operations. Used by over 2,500 schools nationwide, Minga provides the foundation for a better school culture by protecting instructional time and fostering student belonging. For more information, visit minga.io. Legal Disclaimer: EIN Presswire provides this news content "as is" without warranty of any kind. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the author above. You just read: October 23, 2026, 23:17 GMT Distribution channels: Education EIN Presswire's priority is author transparency. We do our best to weed out false and misleading content. The content above is the sole responsibility of the author who makes it available. If you have any complaints, kindly contact the author above. Giuseppe Simpatico Minga Solutions Inc +1 250-864-2949

Every student deserves to be seen, minga is calling on ed tech to make it standard. September 16, 2026, 14:30 GMT Dashboard shows Minga's new Behavior Insights reporting Dashboard shows Minga's new Tardy Insights reporting New Minga feature flags students who are consistently missed for praise, and makes the case this should be standard across ed tech. SAN FRANCISCO, CA, UNITED STATES, September 16, 2026 / EINPresswire.com / - Every student deserves to hear when they're doing something right. New data suggests too many never do. Minga, the Student Behavior & Engagement Platform used by 2,500+ schools nationwide, has launched Behavior Insights, a reporting tool built to make sure schools notice when a student is being missed. Decades of classroom research point to the same conclusion: being seen for the right reasons changes outcomes. A widely cited study out of Brigham Young University, tracking more than 2,500 students across 151 classrooms, found that students in classrooms with higher praise-to-discipline ratios spent 20 to 30% more time on task than students in classrooms where discipline dominated. Separate research has found that students already at risk for behavioral or emotional difficulties tend to receive disproportionately more reprimands and less praise than their peers, the exact students who most need to hear when they're getting it right. The problem was never a lack of concern for these students. It was a lack of visibility into their whole picture. Behavior logs have historically shown schools their discipline data in isolation, with no easy way to see whether the same students showing up in guidance referrals are also the ones never showing up in praise logs. Behavior Insights closes that gap. The tool surfaces a campus-wide praise-to-guidance ratio, then breaks it down to the student level, flagging both students who are being missed for recognition and students whose referral patterns suggest they need more support than they're getting. "Every student wants to hear when they're doing something right, not just when they're doing something wrong," said Jason Richards, CEO of Minga. "The data has always been there in the logs. What we built is a way for schools to actually see it, instead of it staying buried in a spreadsheet nobody has time to interpret." The pattern Behavior Insights surfaces isn't just an accountability issue; it's the same early warning signal schools are already missing elsewhere. A student who stops getting recognized tends to disengage the same way a student who starts arriving late tends to drift toward chronic absenteeism: quietly, and long before it shows up in the numbers that get a school's attention. Minga's position is that this kind of visibility shouldn't depend on which platform a school uses. Behavior Insights is Minga's answer on its own platform. The company would like it to become an industry baseline. Being seen shouldn't depend on which platform a school happens to use, which is why Minga isn't positioning this as a competitive advantage to guard. It's an approach the company would like to see become standard practice across ed tech. "If every platform serving classrooms gave educators this kind of visibility, kids would benefit no matter which tool their school happened to choose," Richards said. "We built this because it needed to exist. We'd rather see the whole industry move toward it than keep it to ourselves." ABOUT MINGA Minga is an educational partner and unified platform designed to help K-12 schools streamline their operations. Used by over 2,500 schools nationwide, Minga provides the foundation for a better school culture by protecting instructional time and fostering student belonging. For more information, visit minga.io. Giuseppe Simpatico Minga Solutions Inc +1 250-864-2949 email us here Visit us on social media: LinkedIn Instagram Facebook YouTube Legal Disclaimer: EIN Presswire provides this news content "as is" without warranty of any kind. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the author above. You just read: September 16, 2026, 14:30 GMT EIN Presswire's priority is author transparency. We do our best to weed out false and misleading content. The content above is the sole responsibility of the author who makes it available. If you have any complaints, kindly contact the author above. Giuseppe Simpatico Minga Solutions Inc +1 250-864-2949

Minga earns 1EdTech Data Privacy Certification for student safety. Minga is now 1EdTech Certified for Data Privacy, giving schools one more reason to trust how student data is handled. San Francisco, CA, Sep 14, 2026 - Minga, the Student Behavior & Engagement Platform used by 2,500+ schools nationwide, has earned 1EdTech Consortium's Data Privacy Certification, following a comprehensive review of its privacy policy, data security practices, and student data safeguards. The Data Privacy Certification confirms that an application satisfactorily meets the expectations of 1EdTech's TrustEd Apps vetting rubric, with full results available in the TrustEd Apps Management Suite. The rubric looks at what data an application collects, its front-end security practices, how it handles third-party data sharing, and its advertising policies. For districts evaluating new tools, that means less time spent vetting a vendor's privacy practices from scratch. Certification isn't automatic. Minga's privacy and security practices went through a full review by 1EdTech's Data Privacy team, then a self-assessment against the rubric's criteria, backed by public documentation to verify the results. The Data Privacy seal now appears in the TrustEd Apps Directory and TrustEd Apps Management Suite for the length of its validity period, after which Minga will need to recertify. "Schools trust us with sensitive student data every day, and that trust has to be earned, not assumed," said Jason Richards, CEO of Minga. "This certification is an outside confirmation of something we've built into Minga from day one: student data stays protected, and schools always know exactly how it's being used." The vetting rubric behind the certification was not built by 1EdTech alone. It was developed collaboratively by the 1EdTech community, made up of leaders from higher education, K-12 districts, government agencies, continuing education providers, edtech suppliers, and other stakeholders working toward the same goal: a shared, open standard for student data privacy. As a member of the 1EdTech Consortium, Minga works alongside educators and other edtech suppliers to help shape the standards and best practices the entire sector relies on. For school leaders, that collaboration shows up as a simpler question to answer during procurement: is this platform certified, or not. Minga's certification adds one more layer of accountability to a platform already used daily by teachers, administrators, and students to manage hallways, tardies, behavior, and communication. As more of a student's school day runs through digital tools, schools are looking for fewer, more trusted platforms instead of more of them. Certification is one way to make that trust visible before a contract is signed. About Minga Minga is a Student Behavior & Engagement Platform used by 2,000+ schools and 700+ districts across the USA. Minga gives schools six solutions in one place: Hallway Management, Tardy Management, Positive Behavior & Rewards, Negative Behavior & Consequences, Intervention & Enrichment, and Communication & Events. The result: schools spend less time managing daily operational chaos and more time building the culture and community that drives outcomes. About RTI Scheduler RTI Scheduler, developed by Gammon Applications and headquartered in Rogers, Arkansas, is a cloud-based flex scheduling platform used by 500+ schools nationwide. The platform specializes in frequent, flexible student scheduling for schools implementing Response to Intervention (RTI) or Flex Time programs. RTI Scheduler gives educators the logistics, communication, and enrollment tools to run an effective intervention program without the administrative burden. To learn more, visit www.rtischeduler.com. Media Contact Giuseppe Simpatico Director of Marketing, Minga [email protected] minga.io Ready to strengthen student Engagement across your school? Book a demo today and start building a more connected school community.