School Threatens Child With Expulsion For Halloween Drawings

from the fear-itself dept

There is an epidemic coursing its way through our school systems that puts our children's lives in danger. For some reason, this epidemic appears to be on the rise, resulting in fear, oppression, and a demoralizing experience for our kids in schools that almost certainly effects the educational experience, if not the psychological well-being of millions of young Americans. As I'm sure you have already guessed, I'm obviously talking about the stupid adults that run everything and have put in place a nearly-institutionalized overreaction to some very real but rare tragedies of recent note. That overreaction is how you get terrified kids during school shooting drills. It's how you get seven year olds suspended for novelty pens, which I guess is mightier than the high-powered rifle.

And it's how you end up with a grade school child being threatened with expulsion for drawing some pictures of what he'd like to dress as on Halloween.

The three images in question depict a soldier, a ninja and a Star Wars character - possibilities for the 8-year-old's Halloween costume. Each of the drawings show the character holding either a gun or a knife.

"I think we really send our children the wrong message when we show that, as adults, we're so afraid of our shadow that an innocent picture - that any 8-year-old might've drawn - is cause for this kind of concern." [Comment from a local citizen]

The report also notes that the student engaged in creative writing which was likewise deemed to be dangerous, but which ultimately turned out to be a fictional story about the school being attacked by zombies, otherwise known as the kind of thing every single young boy thinks about at some point. For these crimes, the principal of the school informed the parents that they have a zero tolerance policy for images depicting guns and violence, that the child's creativity resulted in every other child in the school being in danger, and that they were grounds for expulsion.

And, in case you haven't decided yet, this is stupid. The images of school shootings in our media are powerful ones, but they don't necessarily need to result in everyone over the age of eighteen completely losing their minds and institutionalizing a culture of fear of our own children. You want to create a mythos around violence and guns amongst children? Outlaw discussion about them. You want to ostricize children? Limit creativity. You want to make children trust adults even less than they already do? Try to put them in some iron-grip of zero tolerance during the very time when they are learning to be most expressive, curious, and creative.

Can we please just go back to trusting our children to be relatively decent again? Because each and every one of these stories is dumb.

Filed Under: costumes, drawing, halloween, overreaction, students

High School Student Forced To Remove NRA Shirt, Because Pictures Of Guns Are Scaaaaary

from the the-pen-is-mightier-than-the-10mm-pistol dept

Being a strong, if not fanatical, supporter of free speech sure does make you occasionally jump in bed with strange folks. See, I think the National Rifle Association is largely a group of privileged blowhards who have gone so far past their original purpose as to be a caricature of their former selves. Any virtuous purpose it may have served has been pushed from the public eye by the kind of actions that make me think the NRA is being run by under-fed six-year-olds that found mommy and daddy's liquor cabinet.

And now, for my next magical trick, I'm going to defend a high school student's right to wear an NRA shirt to school. A sophomore from Orange County, California was ordered to remove an NRA t-shirt that included an image of a deer, an American flag, and the silhouette of a hunter.

Canyon High’s principal emailed Bullwinkle’s father, stating, in part, that “The shirt had a gun on it, which is not allowed by school police.” Note that the principal invokes, ominously, the authority of the school police – it’s the police, not administrators, who are enforcing this rule! Nevermind that administrators wrote the dress code and that the principal, according to CBS, enforced it. Pass the buck on the shirt about shooting bucks, if you will.

I don't care if you're the biggest gun-control supporter out there, you should think this is stupid. And, frankly, it's hard to divorce the school's actions from political leanings, because I'd bet everything I own that this young man wouldn't have been asked to remove a shirt with the US Army National Guard logo, which has a gun on it, or perhaps one of the US Army's secondary logos, which include swords. What this is, plain and simple, is a reactionary stifling of speech due to a combination of public opinion against the NRA and silly cautionary rules for expression in schools due to recent shooting incidents. And that isn't acceptable. In fact, courts in the past have said that kind of thing is likely a first amendment violation.

Besides all that, the school's dress code is hilariously broad.

Clothing or Jewelry that promotes or depicts: gang, drugs, alcohol, tobacco, violence, criminal activity, obscenity, the degrading of cultures, ethnicity, gender, religion and/or ethnic values. (In general, anything that is divisive or offensive to a staff member).

Oh, great, let's leave the definition of disallowed clothing up to the whims of a potentially easily-offended faculty. What could go wrong? You know, other than faculty claiming offense at something they dislike but is not offensive.

Let's be clear: the NRA may suck, but it doesn't make a habit out of promoting general violence and school shootings. It has its problems, to be sure, but the NRA is a legitimate lobbying organization. The t-shirt had a picture of a hunter, not an AK-47 spitting bullets into a series of small puppies. To pretend that there was any danger worth censoring a student's speech in any of this is as ridiculous as it is dangerous.

Filed Under: free speech, nra, students

Court Tells Asst. Principal That Students' Fake Social Media Accounts Don't Violate CFAA Or Racketeering Laws

from the insulted-by-someone-who's-not-even-a-legal-adult?-sue! dept

When all else fails, conjure up the CFAA and see if that can stop the "cyberbullying." That seems to be the legal theory here in the case of a middle school assistant principal who sued five students (and their parents) for creating fake social media accounts in his name and then using those accounts to generally make him look as ridiculous as possible. According to the plaintiff (Adam Matot), these fake accounts were used to post material, some of it obscene, which "caused his reputation to be diminished."

Venkat Balasubramani reports that one motion to dismiss has been granted, with the court finding that Matot's claims of CFAA violation simply don't hold up, not even under the broad definitions of "unauthorized access" that has made the law problematic over the last several years.

Reviewing the CFAA case law, the court says that plaintiff’s cause of action is premised on defendants’ use of protected computers beyond the scope of authorization (i.e., use in a way that “exceeded authorized access”). Finding that Nosal, Brekka, and US v. Drew all frowned upon this as a legal theory (particularly when restrictions are contained in terms of use agreements), the court rejects the claim.

More specifically, Judge Michael McShane points out how the CFAA must be applied judiciously in order to prevent both "turning ordinary citizens into criminals" and to prevent the "creation of sweeping internet-policing mandate." (If only more judges felt this way...)

As in both Brekka and Nosal, the rule of lenity precludes CFAA application as to defendants' alleged conduct. Under the rule of lenity, "penal laws [are] . . . to be construed strictly." Nosal, 676 F.3d at 863 (quoting United States v. Wiltberger, 18 U.S. 76, 88 (1820))... As stated in Nosal:

"We construe criminal statutes narrowly so that Congress will not unintentionally turn ordinary citizens into criminals. [B]ecause of the seriousness of criminal penalties, and because criminal punishment usually represents the moral condemnation of the community, legislatures and not courts should define criminal activity. If there is any doubt about whether Congress intended [the CFAA] to prohibit the conduct in which [defendants] engaged, then we must choose the interpretation least likely to impose penalties unintended by Congress."

The CFAA's focus is "on hacking" rather than the creation of a "sweeping internet-policing mandate." Nosal, 676 F.3d at 859. This court cannot fail "to consider the effect on millions of ordinary citizens caused by" recognizing plaintiff's claim. Id. at 863. Plaintiff alleges that defendants created false social media profiles in his name and likeness. Yet, as indicated in Nosal, "lying on social media websites is common." Id. at 862.

For example, in June 2011, Facebook predicted that approximately 83 million of 855 million active users were duplicates, false or undesirable. Twitter is also thought to have a large number of "fake" accounts. More recently, police departments have taken to creating false profiles for the purpose of law enforcement. Were this court to "adopt the [plaintiff's] proposed [argument], millions of unsuspecting individuals would find that they are engaging in criminal conduct," in addition to any civil liability. Nosal, 676 F.3d at 859. This Court "must choose the interpretation [of "authorization"] least likely to impose penalties unintended by Congress."

Accordingly, this Court finds that the rule of lenity precludes application of the CFAA ("access without authorization") to defendants' alleged creation of fake social media profiles in violation of social media websites terms of use.

Facing this dismissal, it appears Matot attempted to bring in a completely new set of statutes in order to pursue the defendants, but Judge McShane was not amused.

In front of the magistrate judge, plaintiff requested leave to add a RICO claim, but the judge rejects this:

Congress did not intend to target the misguided attempts at retribution by juvenile middle school students against an assistant principal in enacting RICO.

When you're attempting to apply laws put in place to pursue organized crime to a bunch of middle school students and their counterfeit accounts, you know you've hit the bottom of the barrel, legally-speaking.

Balasubramani points out that while not all members of school administration are incredibly thin-skinned, Matot is certainly contributing to that stereotype. He links to several posts at Eric Goldman's blog dealing with similar situations where teens have "bullied" administration via social media accounts (fake or real), only to find themselves sued for their actions. Or, as was covered here last year, intimidated by administration and school cops into coughing up social media passwords in response calling an adult hall monitor "mean" in a Facebook post.

It also should be noted that Matot was seeking more than monetary damages in this case. Here's a full list of his demands.

A. Find that defendants have violated 18 U.S.C. 1030;
B. That defendants' conduct is reckless;
C. That defendants' conduct is willful;
D. Enter judgments against defendants and in favor of plaintiff in the amount of $5,000.00;
E. Award plaintiff his costs and attorney fees;
F. Enjoin defendants from using or accessing accounts on Twitter or Facebook for a period deemed reasonable and proper by the court; and
G. Grant plaintiff such other and further relief as justice may require.

Even if it was granted that the students' actions had harmed Matot and "diminished his reputation" (as if this lawsuit doesn't), it seems excessive to ask that the students be banned, even temporarily, from social media platforms for their actions. Fortunately, it looks as though Matot won't be granted any form of relief, not if the rest of the defendants succeed in having their cases dismissed. If they don't, that request alone will allow the remaining defendants to challenge Matot with First Amendment claims, something the court hasn't examined yet -- and something that's very unlikely to resolve in Matot's favor.

Filed Under: cfaa, fake social media profiles, middle school, principal, rico, students

Man Who Raped 14-Year-Old Sentenced To 30 Days In Jail Because Girl Looked Kinda Old And The Internet Is Mean

from the well-okay-then dept

We've seen ridiculous requests and results stemming from the concept of how "mean" the internet is. Recall that Prenda Law wanted all manner of documents sealed because the internet was a cruel, cruel place. To be fair, it isn't like we haven't seen our share of stories about jerks on the web. Still, I'm pretty sure the internet housing a bunch of meanie poopy-heads probably shouldn't factor into the decision to have a former high school teacher who raped a 14 year old girl serve only 30 days in jail.

Now, I know what you're thinking: that didn't happen. A guy did not rape a 14 year old student and then only do a month in the pen. Sorry, you're wrong, and the reasons for it are as absurd as they come.

A Yellowstone County district judge Monday ordered a former Senior High teacher convicted of raping a 14-year-old female student who later committed suicide to spend 30 days in jail. Judge G. Todd Baugh sentenced Stacey Dean Rambold to 15 years in prison, with all but 31 days suspended, for sexual intercourse without consent.

Rambold's attorney, Jay Lansing, argued Monday for the suspended sentence. He said Rambold lost his career, his marriage and his home and has suffered a "scarlet letter of the Internet" as a result of publicity about the case. The judge also said Morales was "older than her chronological age."

Okay, let's take these in order. First, doesn't even 15 years for a teacher raping a student seem on the light side, particularly when that student subsequently killed herself? Secondly, reducing the sentence from 15 years to 30 days for any reason is insane, but when those reasons are that the rapist has lost his family and job while suffering the wrath of a pissed off internet, the justice train has gone off the rails somewhere. One would think any stories of the internet being so cruel to Captain Rapey as to warrant a reduced sentence would have made it into the public light without the defense attorney's help. To even make this argument is an insult to our concept of justice and accountability.

Finally, what the hell difference does it make that the girl may have looked older than her peers? Several news pieces on this story have shown the young lady, who certainly did look mature for her age, and I can imagine some nightmare scenario in which an adult unwittingly hooks up with a mature looking young person who is underage and faces the wrath of the court as a result, but this isn't that scenario. Rambold taught at the girl's school and had every reason to know and/or believe that her age should have come into question, setting aside entirely the fact that teachers probably shouldn't be banging their students no matter what age they are.

The internet can be a cruel world, but it isn't as cruel as a teacher raping a 14-year-old girl. It just isn't.

Filed Under: internet, punishment, rape, students, teachers

CA High School Students Kill A First Amendment-Violating 'Social Media Contract'

from the more-cyberbullying-hysteria dept

The internet offers a ton of positives for schools but so many cling to the belief that it's the enemy. If it's not Wikipedia streamlining students' research efforts, it's the general unfiltered and unsupervised nature of the beast itself, one that doesn't fit in with most administrations' desire to control all inputs into their students' minds.

Social media is even more problematic, what with its student-to-student interface and the ever-present possibility of bad things happening, like cyberbullying or the creation of child pornography (by consenting teens). It can even be turned into a vehicle for mockery of the school and its employees. The solution? Ultra-restrictive policies that minimize the school's exposure in case of unpleasantness.

The Lodi School District in California recently added a new social media policy, one that wasn't taken well by a number of Bear Creek High School students.

Last spring at the end of the 2013 school year, the Lodi school district adopted a new regulation, “Social Networking by Student-Athletes and Co-Curricular Participants,” that all students and their parents must sign as a requirement to take part in sports or clubs. Under the agreement, students agree to submit to the school’s disciplinary authority for what they say on social networking sites, even off-campus on their personal time. Among the types of speech the policy purports to ban are: (1) speech making references to violence or to alcohol or drug use, (2) speech indicating knowledge of cyberbullying, (3) speech that is “demeaning” about any person, (4) “liking” or “retweeting” a social media post that contains prohibited speech, and (5) “subtweeting,” or posting a comment on Twitter that refers to a person who is not named.

Anyone with a passing familiarity with the First Amendment can see the problems inherent in this policy, especially considering it claims authority over off-campus actions. Also problematic is the fact that the policy only affects students who wish to engage in extracurricular activities. The whole "contract" (as the district refers to it) is a gray area, something made worse by it being wholly subject to the personal interpretations of administration members.

Fortunately, Bear Creek students decided to fight back.

The social media policy of the Lodi Unified School District is eliciting strong protests from students at Bear Creek High School in Stockton, some of whom voiced their concerns at the board meeting Tuesday night.

The students represent more than 300 students who signed a petition against the district-wide policy on social media for high school students participating in extracurricular activities.

Faced with this, the administration leapt to the defense of the "social media contract."

Bear Creek Principal Bill Atterberry told KCRA 3 the policy combats cyber-bullying.

"Online bullying is a problem, and we are looking to safeguard our students, because it is rampant," he said.

Atterberry apparently believes that if he says something, it must be true. Cyberbullying is "rampant," or so those writing cyberbullying policies and laws claim. But actual research shows the bullying and cyberbullying have been on the decline over the past decade. The decline is even greater when compared with numbers from the early-90s.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of efforts being made to fight an exaggerated problem and the frequent end result is overwrought policies like Lodi's.

But back to Principal Atterbury and his assertion of non-factual claims as facts.

Students have also talked to an attorney, who said the contract is illegal.

"Our attorneys looked at it and said it was fine, so the attorneys will hash it out," Atterberry said.

Keep this statement in mind for later. And this as well.

As it stands, students are required to sign the contract in order to participate in any extra-curricular activity.

The students' protest drew the attention of the Student Press Law Center, which fired off a six page letter detailing the problems with the Lodi District's "social media contract," stating that the policy "fails to withstand the most basic First Amendment scrutiny."

Faced with this additional heat, the district has decided to drop the policy.

Amid pressure from attorneys, the Lodi Unified School District is suspending a controversial Twitter and Facebook policy.

In a statement, the superintendent writes, “We will revise the statement in order to clearly communicate the original intent, which was to describe how social networking can lead to consequences at school.’

This doesn't seem to be the sort of thing one does with a policy that's legally "fine." This seems more like something one does when they're caught trying to enforce questionable policies.

And then there's this.

The district claims the contract was more of a guideline, and they are set to review it on Tuesday.

Really? A week ago, it was a requirement. Any student wishing to partake in extracurricular activities was made to sign the "contract" first. This claim also runs counter to another statement the district made earlier in the week.

District officials said that clubs and athletics are singled out because it’s an activity that schools can take away from a student.

Odd. That also seems more like a "requirement" to me. After all, you can't hold anything over a student's head if you don't have their signed consent.

It's good to see something positive result from pushback against policies like these. Too often, school districts feel the best way to deal with things they have little control over is to craft broad, far-reaching policies. Sure, these districts may be operating with "good intentions," but these policies are often cures that do more damage than the disease. Erring on the side of caution is still an error, no matter how pure the intentions behind it.

Filed Under: first amendment, free speech, social media, students

DailyDirt: School Is Out For Summer

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

It's that time of year again: kids are about to go back to school in the US. (And for some of them, it's a time to try to skim quickly through their assigned summer reading lists.) While some families still have time to squeeze in a real vacation, the debate over whether summer vacation should exist in the US educational system continues -- are summer vacations a horrible anachronism that should be abolished? Here are just a few links on the topic of learning (or the lack thereof) over the summer months.

• Summer learning programs are getting more and more expensive -- just like the rest of education-related fees and tuition. Do summer vacations create unequal opportunities for kids, and can year-round schooling solve some of the achievement gap problems in the US? [url]
• A study of year-round schooling actually found some negative effects on standardized test performance for disadvantaged students. So there's no silver bullet that will solve our education problems? Dang. [url]
• A 2011 RAND study concluded that students typically lose about a month's worth of learning over summer vacation -- and the losses were particularly severe for low-income students. Reading skills for low-income students declined dramatically over summers, especially when compared to higher-income peers who sometimes showed reading improvements over the same period. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: achievement gap, education, inequality, learning, school, standardized test, students, summer, teachers, tuition, vacation
Companies: rand

Zero Tolerance Policies Put Students In The Hands Of Bad Cops

from the everyone's-'protected'-but-the-students dept

Over the past several years, there's been a rise in the number of law enforcement officers taking up residence in public schools. This rise corresponds with the proliferation of zero-tolerance policies. Combined, these two factors have resulted in criminalization of acts that were once nothing more than violations of school policies, something usually handled by school administrators. As infractions have morphed into criminal acts, the severity of law enforcement "liaison" responses has also escalated.

Here's a recent example of the severity of the response greatly outweighing the actual infraction.

The incident started when a Delaware State Police trooper, who was on assignment as a school resource officer in the Cape Henlopen School District, questioned the third-grader and a fifth-grader while investigating the theft of $1.

According to court papers, the questioning was so intense, complete with threats of the children being sent to a juvenile facility for lying, that the 8-year-old — who was not a suspect — burst into tears. His parents pulled him out of school because of the January 2008 incident and filed a lawsuit in January 2010 charging the officer violated the child’s rights.

The theft of a dollar shouldn't have warranted much more than a visit to the principal's office, if that. But, because of these policies, the school automatically turned it over to a state trooper, who then interrogated two children, presumably attempting to get the 8-year-old to testify against the fifth-grader. Unfortunately, incidents like these are far from rare.

- A water balloon fight towards the end of the school year results in seven students arrested.

- A high school student who changed another student's last name to something inappropriate in the school yearbook is arrested and facing first degree property damage charges, a felony.

- A 14-year-old student is arrested on two charges of "disrupting the educational process" and one count of "obstructing an officer" after wearing an NRA shirt to class -- something that did not violate the school dress code, which bans "depictions of violence" but not guns.

- In Mississippi, kids have been arrested (and incarcerated) for "dress code violations, flatulence, profanity and disrespect."

- In Stockton, CA, a 5-year-old with ADHD had his hands and feet zip-tied by the on-duty officer while he waited for the parents to show up. The child was then charged with "battery on a police officer."

- A cop who was not on duty at a Washington, DC school gave a 10-year-old student a concussion when he "grabbed the back of [the student's] head and slammed his head forward into the table." The student had been sent to the cafeteria for not participating in music class.

- A diabetic student who fell asleep in class claims the school police officer slammed her face into a filing cabinet before arresting her and taking her to jail.

There's more. That's just a sampling. This all builds up to the inevitable end result of cops vs. students, as detailed in this wrongful death suit.

Denys Lopez Moreno sued Officer Daniel Alvarado, Police Chief John Page and the Northside Independent School District in September 2011 for the death of her 14-year-old son, Derek Lopez.

The incident unfolded on Nov. 12, 2010, when Lopez allegedly exited a school bus and, in view of Alvarado, punched another student. Lopez ignored Alvarado's order to freeze and fled the scene with the school officer tailing him in a patrol car, according to the amended complaint.

With Lopez hiding in a shed at a nearby home, Alvarado drove back to the scene of the fight but allegedly refused to give up the search.

"Ignoring his supervisor's orders to 'stay with the victim and get the information from him,' Alvarado placed the second boy into the patrol car and sped into the neighborhood to search for Derek," the complaint states. Local homeowners then directed Alvarado to the shed, Moreno claimed.

"In violation of NISD police department procedures, Alvarado drew his weapon immediately after exiting the patrol car," the complaint states. "With his gun drawn, he rushed through the gate and into the back yard. Within seconds from arriving at the residence, Alvarado shot and killed the unarmed boy hiding in the shed."

Officer Alvarado disobeyed direct orders and school policy in order to pursue an unarmed teen, ultimately ending his life. Alvarado claims he fired at the student because he felt the teen "was coming after him" when the door to the shed the student was hiding in was pushed open and hit him in the face.

But the teen wasn't a threat at any moment up until that point, according to Officer Alvarado himself. Tracking down the teen to a shed in someone's yard, he told the homeowner that the boy "posed no threat" to the homeowner. He also testified that if he thought the teen was a threat he would have called for backup.

Despite these assurances and his own belief that the teen posed no threat, he approached the shed with his weapon drawn. The unexpected swing of the door suddenly turned the unarmed teen into a threat, something Alvarado felt could only be mitigated by shooting.

The whole situation might be deemed "unfortunate" if it wasn't for Alvarado's disciplinary record, which calls into question why he was still employed by the police department, much less allowed to work in a school.

"In approximately a four (4) year period leading up to the shooting, defendant Alvarado had been reprimanded sixteen (16) times," according to the complaint. "Specifically, he had been reprimanded for insubordination and failure to follow supervisors' directives seven (7) times. Due to his poor service record, Alvarado was suspended without pay on five (5) occasions. On May 21, 2008, Alvarado was recommended for termination by Page. Despite being recommended for termination for insubordination and for refusal to follow supervisor directives, Alvarado remained on the force without remedial training."

There's the other problem with bringing police officers into schools. Law enforcement agencies have earned the reputation over the years for protecting their own and allowing "rogue" officers to go largely unpunished. Termination is rare and prosecution even more so. When you turn over low-grade disciplinary issues to law enforcement, you run the very real risk of handing a student over to a cop like Alvarado -- someone who's been slapped on the wrist multiple times and sent back into the general population.

On one hand, you have schools with zero-tolerance policies. On the other, you have law enforcement agencies with all the tolerance in the world. And in the middle, you have kids as young as five being zip tied and charged with battering an officer and unarmed teens being pursued and killed over fistfights.

School administrators are wilfully handing their students over to law enforcement members that aren't even properly vetted by their own departments and then using "zero tolerance policies" to absolve themselves of the dismal results. There seems to be no real push to roll these policies back or for administrations to take charge of student discipline again, so odds are this will get a whole lot worse for students before it gets any better, much to the detriment of the next generation.

Filed Under: police, students, zero tolerance

Texas School District Drops Embattled RFID Student IDs; Opts For Tons Of Cameras Instead

from the No-Child-Left-Unwatched dept

The Northside Independent School District (NISD) of Texas, best known for being sued by a student over its mandatory RFID card policy, is dropping the technology that originally landed it in the courtroom.

These chipped student ID cards were deployed to track students in hopes of bumping up the district's attendance numbers -- thus increasing its share of funding tied to daily attendance. Despite the court deciding in its favor, declaring the cards didn't violate the students' privacy or "right of religion," the district has decided to abandon the RFID tracking system. Apparently, the technology wasn't quite the attendance silver bullet administration thought it would be, as Slate's Will Oremus discovered.

Northside Independent School District spokesman Pascual Gonzalez told me that the microchip-ID program turned out not to be worth the trouble. Its main goal was to increase attendance by allowing staff to locate students who were on campus but didn't show up for roll call. That was supposed to lead to increased revenue. But attendance at the two schools in question—a middle school and a high school—barely budged in the year that the policy was in place. And school staff found themselves wasting a lot of time trying to physically track down the missing students based on their RFID locators.

Great. So something was so direly important it needed to be battled in court, but so ultimately useless the district abandoned it a year later. The failure of RFID cards to attach these Texas schools to the state money train probably won't deter other schools from implementing this technology. If anything, the court's ruling will make it easier for other districts to defend themselves against privacy complaints.

The most disappointing aspect is that the district has decided to swap one form of surveillance for another.

Meanwhile, Gonzalez told me Northside plans to capture the safety and security benefits of RFID chips through other technological means. "We're very confident we can still maintain a safe and secure school because of the 200 cameras that are installed at John Jay High School and the 100 that are installed at Jones Middle School. Plus we are upgrading those surveillance systems to high-definition and more sophisticated cameras. So there will be a surveillance-camera umbrella around both schools."

Some call it a panopticon. Some call it an umbrella. Using the word "umbrella" lends it a protective aspect, which is a bit misleading. This tactic seems unlikely to increase attendance and there's very little evidence that indicates more cameras = more safety.

The district's administrator also took care to point out that dropping the RFID cards was not a victory for civil liberties advocates.

But the backlash and the lawsuit weren't the deciding factors, Gonzalez told me. "While [privacy groups] are extolling the fact that they won, the fact is that that was a very minor part of our conversation, because the federal court and the court of appeals both upheld Northside's position on that. We were on solid ground."

Well, whatever justifies the district's actions, I guess. Gonzalez' statement isn't very flattering though, painting him as someone who values control over providing a welcoming learning environment.

Filed Under: cameras, rfid, students, surveillance, texas
Companies: northside independent school district

FL Schools Go Minority Report On Students, Give Parents Opt Out Choice Afterward

from the scan-you-see-the-problem? dept

In past discussions around the use of technology to achieve school security, we have typically found that the practice has more to do with money than safety. Such was the case when a Texas school district issued RFID-chipped student IDs, the impetus for which was actually all about receiving government funding based on attendance. While there was backlash from students and parents in that case, the ire was likely somewhat muted by the fact that these were still basically just ID cards with a little extra juice in them.

The situation is quite different in the case of Polk County, Florida schools, which instituted compulsory iris scans of its high school, middle school, and elementary school students, and then sent out a letter to parents announcing they could opt out after the scans had already been completed.

Reports were confirmed Wednesday that Daniel Jenkins Academy, a high school, Davenport School of the Arts, a middle school, and Bethune Academy, an elementary school, planned a pilot scan program with a security program and the schools allowed officials from Stanley Convergent Security Solutions to take iris scans of an unknown number of students. Parents of the students were sent a letter on Friday, May 24, although the letters were dated for delivery the day before. The letters stated that the scanning program would begin on May 20, and allow for students to opt out. However, all students were scanned before any letters were sent home.

There is a saying that goes something like this: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. While public school administrations can often be found rife with the latter, the lack of judgment in this case seems unbelievably grotesque. Anyone with a modicum of sense simply had to know that scanning irises of students was going to raise at least some controversy. To supercharge that by conducting the scans a full three days before a letter informing parents was scheduled to go out, and four days after it actually did, reeks of masochism. Add to that anyone on the lower levels of the operation, who might not be aware of the late-arriving letter to parents, not batting an eye when there wasn't a single instance of parents opting out of the procedure and you have the kind of cauldron of dumb that keeps private schools in business.

To add insult to injury, parents are reporting that attempts to get answers from the school are about as useful as a wedding ring is to the Pope. One particular parent was hilariously directed by the school, which should have had the answers to questions about procedures conducted on its students, to instead contact PCSB, the county school board.

By the time we were able to make a phone call to PCSB (a time span of about 1 hour), the secretary told us that this pilot program had been suspended. When we did get a return call from one contact, she reiterated that the program has been suspended, like this should appease us. My husband continued to ask where our son's private scans were, and she said the company was instructed to destroy the information. When we asked how do we know this has happened, there was no answer.

It is interesting that this letter went home on Friday afternoon at 3pm. Like I told you originally, everyone was gone by 4pm when I tried to make calls. So when exactly did this program get suspended? As of Friday afternoon, it was still in effect. Are they trying to say that somehow it was suspended by Tuesday morning (Monday being a holiday)? It seems like they are mostly focused on this program, like the program was the problem. It's not, it's the invasion of my family's Constitutional right to privacy that is the problem, as well as the school allowing a private company access to my child without my consent or permission. This is stolen information, and we cannot retrieve it.

The district has since claimed that all records and scans from the program have been destroyed, but hasn't bothered to offer any method for parents to confirm this claim. So now we get to endure the resulting suspicion and resentment that is likely going to go unresolved. The district will claim error, parents will stay outraged, and the lawsuits will likely fly. All because the schools couldn't be bothered to tell parents their children were going to have their irises scanned.

Filed Under: consent, florida, iris scans, students, surveillance

So It's Come To This: Seven High School Students Arrested For Throwing... Water Balloons

from the overreaction-is-our-only-reaction,-which-always-starts-off-a-chain-reaction dept

The weather's (mostly) hot. School's almost out. And what better way to celebrate summer being almost here than being arrested and charged with a misdemeanor for throwing water balloons.

Hail academia, forever teaching our youth that anything and everything will be punished to the fullest extent of the law, even childhood hijinks our parents would have approved of, if only they weren't so busy being arrested themselves.

Seven teenage students in North Carolina were arrested on Thursday and charged with a misdemeanor for throwing water balloons during a school prank. A parent was also arrested during the incident.

The seven boys, all between the ages of 16 and 17, threw balloons filled with tap water as an end-of-year prank at Enloe High School in Raleigh. The balloons were rumored to be filled with “other substances,” but Wake County Public School System spokeswoman Renee McCoy said “all indications” were that only water was used.

Six of the teens were charged with disorderly conduct. The seventh was charged with assault and battery for hitting a school security officer with a balloon.

You've got to respect the uniform -- even if that uniform is a 50/50 polyester/ugly blend. If other students, teachers and administration staff get hit, that's a paddlin' simple "disorderly conduct" (a.k.a., the cop's best friend). And if you can't respect the security guard's uniform, you had damn well better respect the boys in blue, or you'll get thrown to the ground for throwing water balloons.

Kevin Hines, the parent who was arrested, was just acting out of concern for a student's wellbeing. No good deed goes unpunished, not when we're sending cops after kids armed with water balloons.

Kevin Hines said saw Raleigh police officers acting aggressively towards a student they were arresting when he drove up to the school.

"Being lifted up by the neck and taken down hard," Hines said.

Hines said he tried to intervene was but was told he didn't know the whole story. Hines complied and said he wished to speak to the principal.

"You're just trying to cause trouble. Get out," Hines said an officer told him.

Hines said he then attempted to talk to a lieutenant but was approached by two officers and threatening with a TASER. Hines said he told the officers that wasn't necessary.

"They arrested me on grounds of trespassing," Hines said. "So, they put cuffs on me and carried me away."

Swell. An unarmed parent who's concerned that someone (NOT A COP) might get hurt is handcuffed, threatened with a taser and charged for "causing trouble," which apparently goes on the books as "second degree trespassing."

Another parent is "causing trouble" as well, although this might be the kind of trouble that sticks:

The mother of an Enloe High School student has filed a complaint with the Raleigh Police Department after an officer threw her son to the ground Thursday as police responded to a water balloon battle at the school.

Call me naive, but I never thought I'd ever read a sentence this incongruous in my life: "...as police responded to a water balloon battle..." Tase me. Tase me now, lord. At least it wasn't a water pistol fight. Martial law would have been declared and the National Guard called in.

Here's the school's official statement on the "event."

Renee McCoy, a representative of Wake County Public Schools, said they rely on the training of the Raleigh Police Department in these situations. "We leave those decisions up to Raleigh PD," McCoy said.

Punt.

Seven kids with misdemeanors on their records ("released on bail" -- I am not kidding) for throwing weaponized water. I'm not really sure what schools are teaching kids at this point -- that every minor infraction must be dealt with swiftly and brutally? That violating school policies is a criminal offence? Whatever they're trying to teach by jettisoning critical thinking and replacing it with zero tolerance cops on speed dial, it's not getting through. All students are going to learn is that school administration has farmed out its disciplinary responsibilities to a variety of humorless, uniformed thugs -- some private, some public -- and that there really is no crime too small.

Filed Under: arrested, north carolina, pranks, students, wake county public schools, water balloons