Texas Students Required to Wear Tracking Devices

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Some more information from the San Antonio newspaper
Two school districts in the Houston area — Spring and Santa Fe ISDs — have used the technology for several years and have reported gains of hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue for improved attendance. Spring ISD spokeswoman Karen Garrison said the district, one-third the size of Northside, hasn’t had any parent backlash.
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The American Civil Liberties Union fought the use of the technology in 2005 at a rural elementary school in California and helped get the program canceled, said Kirsten Bokenkamp, an ACLU spokeswoman in Texas. She said concerns about the tags include privacy and the risks of identity theft or kidnapping if somebody hacks into the system.
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Texas Education Agency spokeswoman DeEtta Culbertson said no state law or policy regulates the use of such devices and the decision is up to local districts.
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mysanantonio.com/news/education/article/Students-will-be-tracked-via-chips-in-IDs-3584339.php#ixzz1vsssNfl7

The article mentions that the school district board of trustees was sharply divided on approving the program, with objections on the ground of privacy. The attitude of parents at the two schools seem to be mixed.
 
austenbosten said:
For a state that prides itself on Liberty, Individualism, and the Constitution they certainly don’t live by it. :rolleyes:

I’ll say one thing, from the amount of bullying I faced in school; truancy kept me from taking my own life…sad to think where I would be today if my school had did this. 😦
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Indeed. Many felt this way methinks.
 
In the words of Boris Johnson I will snip it up and sprinkle it on his cornflakes and eat it.😃
 
mexolic said:
The Northside Independent School District in San Antonio, Texas is reguiring middle & high school students to wear a tracking chip around their neck while on campus. The RFID (radio-frequency identification) chip tracks the location of a student at all times. It’s purpose is to reduce truancy. Many parents and students are opposed to this. High school sophomore Andrea Hernamdez refuses to use the new IDs, citing invasion of privacy and religious beliefs, calling the tracking devices the “mark of the beast”. Should we be concerned about this?
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So because the families aren’t worried about truancy or skipping class, because teachers can’t take attendance and administrators can’t track down students hanging out in bathrooms or locker bays, the kids have to wear tracking chips?

This is just crazy. No I wouldn’t let my child wear the thing. I really don’t think this would pass a legal challenge. I’m very surpised it is a TX school district trying this.
 
Increase attendance. Through more efficient attendance management, schools can generate additional revenues by identifying students who are not in their seats during roll call but who are in the school and locate them. (Increased attendance = increased state revenues)
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This is interesting. I thought most school districts/schools got their funds based on enrollment - not on whether a particular child was in 3rd period last Tuesday. So if a child attends 1st period but skips 5th, the school is docked? What a nightmare system. I can almost see why administrators would come up with the chip idea.

However, what I see happening as backlash is that the kids who might have skipped one period will simply not come to school at all. Then they won’t be tracked by the chip.

I do also foresee these systems being hacked - either by kids as a lark to mess stuff up, or by creeps who want to get access to the kids.
 
Mrs_Sally said:
This is just crazy. No I wouldn’t let my child wear the thing. I really don’t think this would pass a legal challenge. I’m very surpised it is a TX school district trying this.
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Houston’s Spring Independent School District has been monitoring 28,000 students this way since 2004. I am not sure if there ever has been a court challenge, though.
 
mexolic said:
The Northside Independent School District in San Antonio, Texas is reguiring middle & high school students to wear a tracking chip around their neck while on campus. The RFID (radio-frequency identification) chip tracks the location of a student at all times. It’s purpose is to reduce truancy. Many parents and students are opposed to this. High school sophomore Andrea Hernamdez refuses to use the new IDs, citing invasion of privacy and religious beliefs, calling the tracking devices the “mark of the beast”. Should we be concerned about this?
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The issue, of course, is ADA - average daily attendence, by which Texas schools (still, I assume) receive state funds.

I’m uncomfortable with this. I would be far more comfortable with holding parents accountable, financially and otherwise, for the actions of their minor children. the first time a police car pulls up to their employer’s door, or their house, and requires them to come to the school…

Jon
 
marvinb1 said:
Its not like they have a 3d image of all the people, so there is still privicy. As catholics we shoul not be doing any thing that we would be ashame to tell people any way. and for people who say shower time should be private againg you would be a blip on the screan not a 3d holograph image for people to look at.
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It doesn’t matter. We still should have a right to privacy. After all, how can we hide the fact that we’re praying if our transponder says that we’re always in church? 😉
 
kimmielittle said:
👍👍
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Of course we know this will never happen because it would require the schools to "discriminate" between trouble-makers and non-troublemakers, and this cannot be done because it violates their basic ideological position that nothing and no one is better or worse than anything or anyone else. :sad_yes:
 
marvinb1 said:
This is a great idea but not far enought. i beleive that at birth every one should get a chip implated in them. Now this chip should only be used when a) the person is kinaped , b) running the the law, or c) underage runaways. all other times it is inert. This would benefit us greatly.
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Yes, much like cloning, this could never go wrong…
 
SamH said:
Because no student will ever dream of having a friend take their tracking device to class for them. Then they can “prove” they attended class because the tracking device shows they were there.:rolleyes:
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Or as I read somewhere, a quick trip of the card in a microware.😃
 
What could go wrong with the people who have athoriety over you knowing where you are? Its not like the school can see your kids at home its only at school. If the kid skips that probaly wont tell the paent and if they dont get caugt then the kids thinks its ok to do bad things. This will make it possible for those kids to get the diaplin they need. also for the kids giving id to the friend if they have a good enough system they will see if two blips are on top of each other.
 
Heman
How could it go wrong. the way i see it the only people who don’t want the government to know where they are, are the people that are someplace they shouln,t, besides i Think a small loss in privaicy is worth being able to find my lovedones if they disaperar.
 
sedonaman said:
Of course we know this will never happen because it would require the schools to "discriminate" between trouble-makers and non-troublemakers, and this cannot be done because it violates their basic ideological position that nothing and no one is better or worse than anything or anyone else. :sad_yes:
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Actually, in Anaheim, California a similar program was adopted only for students who were chronically truant. Participation was voluntary, but offered as an alternative to punishment. The program used conversations over GPS enabled cell phones, rather than RFID. The program is only a year and half old, but seems to be working.

The problem with RFID is that, as others pointed out, all a kid has to do is pass his badge to some other student and then leave. But the Texas schools aren’t worried about that, because their programs are really just about counting more students as present so that more money can be collected from the state government.
Two schools at the Northside Independent School District in San Antonio began issuing the RFID-chip-laden student-body cards when classes began last Monday. Like most state-financed schools, their budgets are tied to average daily attendance. If a student is not in his seat during morning roll call, the district doesn’t receive daily funding for that pupil, because the school has no way of knowing for sure if the student is there.
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But with the RFID tracking, students not at their desk but tracked on campus are counted as being in school that day, and the district receives its daily allotment for that student.
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“What we have found, they are there, they’re in the building and not in their chairs. They are in the cafeteria, with counselors, in stairwells or a variety of places, some legitimately and some not,” district spokesman Pascual Gonzalez said in a telephone interview. “If they are on campus, we can legally count them present.”
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wired.com/threatlevel/2012/09/rfid-chip-student-monitoring/
 
mexolic said:
The Northside Independent School District in San Antonio, Texas is reguiring middle & high school students to wear a tracking chip around their neck while on campus. The RFID (radio-frequency identification) chip tracks the location of a student at all times. It’s purpose is to reduce truancy. Many parents and students are opposed to this. High school sophomore Andrea Hernamdez refuses to use the new IDs, citing invasion of privacy and religious beliefs, calling the tracking devices the “mark of the beast”. Should we be concerned about this?
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This is wonderful display of freedom, in that private institutions are free to implement any rules that they wish. It’s ‘True Freedom’…:rolleyes:

If every private institution were allowed to implement whatever rules they wish to choose, with the mindset of 'if you don’t like it, then you’re free to leave and go somewhere else, then there exists complete control under freedom… Welcome to the new tyranny. 🙂
 
marvinb1 said:
Heman
How could it go wrong. the way i see it the only people who don’t want the government to know where they are, are the people that are someplace they shouln,t, besides i Think a small loss in privaicy is worth being able to find my lovedones if they disaperar.
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Right because private information is never hacked and made public. No one ever releases private information, it always stays private. And school computers are the safest most secure computers on the planet. :rolleyes:

Since none of that is true, it is only a matter of time until private information becomes public.
 
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