Wireless Tracking of Students
Wireless Tracking of Students by UCStrategies Staff
In a hotly debated issue of children’s safety, a recent ruling made it possible for San Antonio’s Northside School District to track students’ movements throughout the school building. In a district with over 100,000 students in total and the fourth-largest in Texas, the student trackers are very similar to methods used by scientists following endangered species.
A magnet school in San Antonio recently became the first school to launch the Student Locator Project, a year-long pilot program to track 4,200 middle and high school students anytime they are on the school’s campus. In order to do so, students are required to wear SmartID card badges. These badges are embedded with tracking devices using radio frequency identification (RFID) and have the ability to monitor students’ whereabouts, whether they are in the library, hallway, or even the bathroom.
Unlike earlier attempts to use tracking tags, these come without a choice – neither parents nor students can refuse the mandatory project.
Moreover, it is all perfectly legal. A recent ruling by a judge in Texas decided that because students are on the property belonging to the school, the district can legally enforce this rule. This enforcement has not come without opposition, however. Fifteen-year old sophomore Andrea Hernandez was expelled from the school because she refused to wear the badge for religious reasons.
As a devout Christian, Hernandez says that the badge is representative of a mark of the beast. U.S. District Judge Orlando L. Garcia, however, claims that the badge is a “secular choice rather than a religious concern.” This ruling means that Hernandez is forced to decide whether she will wear the badge. She has until the end of the present semester to make this decision.
Rutherford Institute, Hernandez’s legal representation, has requested a temporary ban of the ruling while they prepare their appeal. According to Rutherford attorneys, “the school’s attempts to penalize, discriminate and retaliate against Andrea violate her rights under Texas’ Religious Freedom Act and the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.”
Furthermore, they state that the primary motivating factor for tracking has less to do with keeping students safe and much more to do with the money. With improved attendance rates comes an increase in the school’s funding. The Rutherford Institute believes this is the reason the school is fighting to keep the project alive.
In their words, “school officials hope that by expanding the program to the district’s 112 schools, they can secure up to $1.7 million in funding from the state government.”
In line with Texas law, funds are distributed to schools based on the attendance of its students. In other words, when students are absent, schools do indeed lose money. The district stated that they lost $1.7 million a year because of this reason. Pascual Gonzalez, a district spokesman, said that the school is not attempting to spy on students, but rather attempt to ensure that offenders are on time when school starts.
On the district’s website, the program is described as the following: “Northside ISD is harnessing the power of radio frequency identification technology (RFID) to make schools safer, know where our students are while at school, increase revenues, and provide a general purpose 'smart' ID card.”
President of the Rutherford Institute, John W. Whitehead, says that “we're in a really precarious state in this country when we're debating a case like this. In a state institution, can they force you into complete compliance.” As a response to that, Whitehead claims, “I say no.”
The present situation shows Andrea Hernandez as currently in school and not wearing the badge. Whitehead says that “all she wants is a regular ID.” For this, “I think we have a shot,” he says, because “the Supreme Court may hear it.”
However, halting or making the project voluntary instead of mandatory will not be easy. “There's a lot of money to be made off of these things,” Whitehead points out. This could mean “they're going to go nationwide because of corporate interest.”
Beyond the invasion of privacy, there could be far-reaching negative effects to this form of extreme supervision. Harvard-trained attorney and wireLawyer’s founder, Matthew Tollins, requests that people “just think about the chilling effect this could have on a child’s creativity and learning if they feel like everywhere they move they are being watched.” In light of this, he says, “it's a very real concern and very real invasion of privacy as protected by our Bill of Rights.”
This issue will only get bigger if the Student Locator Project extends as planned to the entire district and beyond. (RP) Link