Brittan, California implements remote student tracking
Parents Protest Student Computer ID Tags
Updated 29 March 2005: Town forces radio tracking system out of school. Update at bottom of post.
Brittan Elementary School has new ID badges. Visible identification in schools is not a new concept but these badges are equipped with radio tracking transmitters. Many parents see this as an attack on basic liberties.
The badges introduced at Brittan Elementary School on Jan. 18 rely on the same radio frequency and scanner technology that companies use to track livestock and product inventory. Similar devices have recently been used to monitor youngsters in some parts of Japan.
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“There is a way to make kids safer without making them feel like a piece of inventory,” said Michael Cantrall, one of several angry parents who complained. “Are we trying to bring them up with respect and trust, or tell them that you can’t trust anyone, you are always going to be monitored, and someone is always going to be watching you?”Cantrall said he told his children, in the 5th and 7th grades, not to wear the badges. He also filed a protest letter with the board and alerted the ACLU.
Earnie Graham is both the Principal who implemented the tracking system and the superintendent of the single-school district. He doesn’t understand what all the fuss is about.
“Sometimes when you are on the cutting edge, you get caught,” Graham said, recounting the angry phone calls and notes he has received from parents.
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Graham dismisses each objection, arguing that the devices do not emit any cancer-causing radioactivity, and that for now, they merely confirm that each child is in his or her classroom, rather than track them around the school like a global-positioning device. The 15-digit ID number that confirms attendance is encrypted, he said, and not linked to other personal information such as an address or telephone number.What’s more, he says that it is within his power to set rules that promote a positive school environment: If he thinks ID badges will improve things, he says, then badges there will be.
“You know what it comes down to? I believe junior high students want to be stylish. This is not stylish,” he said.
Absolutely and completely clueless, or is there something else at work here? InCom Corp., the company that manufactures the tracking system, gave the school several thousand dollars to install it. They plan to use the school as an example of the system and will pay royalties to Brittan if the product starts selling.
The ACLU is lending support to the protesting parents.
“If this school doesn’t stand up, then other schools might adopt it,” Nicole Ozer, a representative of the American Civil Liberties Union, warned school board members at a meeting Tuesday night. “You might be a small community, but you are one of the first communities to use this technology.”
So to recap there is a system in place that monitors when students are in the classroom. We had one of these when I was in school - we called it a teacher. The principal/superintendent implemented the system after the company involved offered thousands of dollars plus future royalties. We what this was back in the day but we didn’t have very much of it - we called it graft. The principal/superintendent implemented the system without feedback and against opposition and says essentially that what he wants, he gets, period. We didn’t have this at all in my school but we studied it in History and Poli-Sci - it’s called Tyranny. Lastly, the system has future capability to live track students anywhere they go, no matter what they are doing, with no recourse of avoidance and punishment promised for non-cooperation. We didn’t have this either but we studied it in Literature class - it was called Big Brother.
(Tip credit to Bettina and Charles Jacobson)
UPDATE 29 March 2005
On Jan. 18, every student at the kindergarten- through eighth-grade school got a badge, though scanners were installed only in seventh- and eighth-grade classrooms.
School administrators said the program was mandatory and threatened to discipline — even expel — students who didn’t wear their badges.
As time went by, parents grew more upset and more than 150 flocked to a board meeting Feb. 15. At the meeting, the InCom team pulled the plug.
Doug Ahlers, a high school teacher and one of InCom’s founders, read a prepared statement. Given the community dissent and concerns, the company had decided to terminate the test. The company’s “only regret,” he told the hushed crowd, was that the district would not reap the promised royalties from future InCom sales.
The radio tracking of student movement is gone. There is no mention of the badges themselves. If they’ve kept the badge idea I just hope they’ve gone to a nicer design. The ones they had been using (picture in the article linked above) look like the prisoner identification boards used in mug shots.
Well now to tell you the truth this is not a bad idea. It may not be Politically correct but I hate PC any way. This is a great opportunity for the students. Think about, attendance is now taken electronically, so you wana skip a class give the kid who sits in front of you soda money to hold on to your card, just put it in his bag and sit it next the seat. Hey ways for kids to learn about business and an easier means of skipping school.
“The teacher may not remember me there but you can check the electric record to see that I was.”
I work for a security company. I order and make badges all day long. I can only track where the badges are scanned, this is common in many corporate offices now. Each scan panel cost any where from 1000 to 5000 dollars to install. Each badge cost around 5 dollars just for the blank badge, the printer used to print the badge was around 15000 dollars at the time though they have cheaper printers for the process. Keep in mind though that mine does not do the programming of the badge itself. Each ribbon that prints 150 badges with a protective over lay is around 125 dollars.
That cost may not sound like much but depending on the size of the school well that�s a lot of money and it adds up fast.
Now I work in an office building, with adults. Around 2,500 of them and perhaps another 500 to 1000 contractors at any given time. A large part of my time is making new badges for people who have lost and or destroyed them some how. Ooops how many times a year is these kids going to loose they�re stinking badges. Hehe I say let them do it. The cost will become to prohibive in very short order.
Oh and if they think that they can track the badges one they have been lost then they obviously dont know how good kids are at intentionally loosing things.
Granted the system they are using is very different from my companies and the costs above are probably not accurate for the schools system. But I would find rather hard to believe that the schools would be any cheaper.
We’ll have to shrink it and imbed it in their bodies. We could track their movement from birth and it would be just like being born with restricted sentence. This would avoid mistakes. What if they start chewing on them, like a pencil? I wonder if they are toxic, or if the kids could choke on them.
Drop the badges in the microwave and cook them for about 20 seconds on medium. That should disrupt the ‘chips’, without ruining the external ID portion of the badge.
Once InCom Co. tires of replacing ‘defective’ badges, Mr. Graham’s little exercise in “getting machines to do what people should be doing” will grind to a halt.
Can’t these be deguassed?? Or would copper interfere with the tracking? Or how bout mud??? Or sticking it on a car of a teacher you don’t like and when they want you to explain why your always going home to that instructor’s house you can say the teacher’s been abusing you inproper ways.
Well, it certainly would make taking attendance every period a breeze.
“Hehe I say let them do it. The cost will become to prohibive in very short order. ” - Travis
No, they’ll start charging the students for them like they do now with IDs in HS and college if you need a new one made.
Microwaving the badges is so inefficient. Determine the frequency at which the scanner receives, and talk to any over the road trucker from the ’70s about what that “rear window defroster” switch on his dashboard really controlled.
Hmm You think they would try that. They would fail if they if did. Consider that almost every where ive read at least 30 some % of students are on reduced lunch. How is a princple going to convince parents that cant even aford a $2 meal to swing for the tracking device that they didnt want in the first place.
Oh I have no doubt he will try. But I am fairly certain he will fail to get a cent from most parents.
It will not be long that the students will find a way to make the ID not scanable. Also if it is such a good idea then why is the school district staff also assigned the ID’s? Just because a student used the restroom does not in any way show that they did a damage while there.
This is false security. It’s presence will be used by the school staff as a reason they don’t have to take roll or watch what’s going on around them, because the scanners are doing it. Except they aren’t - they’re tracking badges, and the badges don’t necessarily come with the right student attached. You wind up with less security and control than before.
I could have got rich in high school if there were teachers that relied on an ID badge instead of looking at the students on test day…
i am a student in a california high school. this really scares me and it’s really easy for people to say it’s not a big deal until they are the ones being electronically monitered, video taped and searched without their consent. Think of the implications this may have, first schools, then work places, next thing you know well all have a chip perminently implanted on our forheads. Just because we have the technology dosen’t mean we should use it.
Parents and paranoids are over reactioning to this proposal. Without parent interaction most children would accept it for what it is - an ID Card. Get use to it! With implementation of the “Real ID”, everyone will be “tracked” and “there will always be someone watching you”. We gave our rights and liberties away freely after 911.
i am a high school and this idea is plain pathetic. my school has a excellent system in place that helps moniter attedence. if a student is late or missed a day of school then he/she simply goes to the desinated office and show them a note or make sure there parents have called, then pick up a slip to show to your teachers, no fuss no problem. of course this requires some actually work on the teachers part