Loss of Privacy

The Huntsville school district aims to keep track of students who ride the bus with a new RFID system.

the system, called ZPass, will allow school administrators to keep better track of those students who ride the bus each day. Kyle Koski, transportation director of the district, said about 5,000 students ride the bus.

“It is an immediate way that we can have feedback if a child does not get off (the bus) where he’s supposed to,” Ward said.

The district and police went on alert twice in August when, on the first and second days of school, two elementary students briefly went missing after taking the wrong buses.

This system is being implemented because two small children got on the wrong bus on the first and second days of school. This sort of thing happens every year when students try to learn the new bus system. A student may have ridden bus #7 last year, but this year bus #12 runs the route that takes him/her home. The same applies to new students who don’t know the bus system, students who have never ridden the bus before and kindergarteners who simply don’t understand how things work.

Each student in the pilot program will be assigned a personalized radio frequency identification (RFID) card, which they will swipe in front of a card reader installed on the bus’ dashboard. Students will swipe their cards each time they get on the bus and whenever they exit.

Using RFID technology and GPS, the card reader records the location of the bus at the time of the swipe and immediately loads that information onto the district’s computer network. At any time, administrators can pull up the data — including a map — and see exactly where a student both entered and exited a bus.

Though the new system is designed to track students, it has a major flaw. The system appears to only match a head count with the count on the RFID reader. There’s nothing to say the person holding little Johnny’s card is really Johnny. This is not a new flaw, yet every district that attempts to use RFID for tracking students seems to ignore it.

Catawba Valley Community College student Marc Bechtol thought there was something wrong with being forced to use a debit card he didn’t want because it was also his student ID card. Without activating the debit card, Bechtol had no way to access university services, including obtaining his financial aid.

Bechtol complained last spring that school was forcing him to obtain a debit card issued by financial firm Higher One, and that his personal information would be shared with the company. When he did, he said he immediately began receiving credit card spam, which directly inspired his Facebook comment.

After being left with no other choice, he was forced to activate the card. That’s when he got angry.

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Connecticut-based Higher One works with hundreds of schools to create combination student ID cards/debit cards that can be used for direct deposit of financial aid funds. The cards can also be used to withdraw cash or make purchases. There have been frequent complaints that the school cards carry higher fees than traditional ATM cards. On many campuses, students are charged 50 cents for each “debit” card purchase at retail outlets in which they enter their PIN codes for verification — known as PIN-debit purchases, as opposed to signature-debit. ATM withdrawals at non-Higher One cash machines cost $2.50.

The cards offer some advantages for both students and school. Similar to debit cards used to deliver unemployment benefits or other government payments, the cards are far cheaper than mailing checks. And recipients have quicker access to the funds.

But confusion over debit-vs-credit purchases, and a $19 “abandoned account” non-use fee that hits after nine months, have irritated users.  The idea that a private firm is getting a cut of financial aid payments through debit card fees should also raise eyebrows.

This is an insidious use of the card by Higher One. The student has no choice but to use the card and, when they don’t use the card, they are then charged fees for not using the card.

But the chief concern about forcing students to use ID cards with MasterCard logos should be obvious: Why start kids down the credit/debit card route before it’s necessary? And why get them used to the nickel and diming?

According to FIRE, Becthol isn’t completely out of trouble yet.

Despite CVCC’s decision to rescind Bechtol’s punishment, problems remain, as Bechtol is still required to notify the college before using computers on campus. CVCC also has failed to revise the unconstitutional policy it used to punish him and has not rescinded its claim that the Facebook comment was a policy violation.

While Bechtol’s comment about vandalizing the school is not appropriate, and wasn’t even serious, the entire incident brings attention to how intrusive schools and companies associated with them have become. If a student does not want this combination ID, there should be another solution, such as a paper check or a direct transfer into a student’s personal account that they established on their own. Forcing them to use a company that they do not want to do business with should never be an option.

These combination cards are also not a good idea because they are a student’s ID, meal plan card, and an ATM card. If a single person in this chain makes a mistake, the student is then forced to pay overage charges. For example, say a student only has $100 left in his account and the person scanning the card for a meal accidentally puts in $1000, it is the student who has to fix the problem.

If a school is going to force these cards on its students, there needs to be an opt-out. A mandated checking account from a specific financial institution by the school should not be a requirement to attend college.

Two weeks ago, a little girl was murdered, presumably by her stepfather. He has, apparently, confessed to the crime and is awaiting trial. While this is a horrible tragedy, the local school districts have taken the knee-jerk response to solving a problem that does not exist.

The playground gates are locked, infrared cameras patrol 24/7 and two adults maintain vigilance while 220 Community Christian School children leave the grounds each day. Cedar Canyon Elementary School has 12 to 15 adults outside the school after every school day as children are picked up by parents or loaded onto buses. Cedar Canyon Principal Betty Smith locks the front gate to the schoolyard nightly.

The actions are not a response to any single incident but prudent precautions in a wayward world, Community Christian School Principal Chris Geary said.

“We know we live in a sin-sick world,” Geary said. “(The precautions) help our families feel secure. We just try to be vigilant.”

While the schools are responsible for students during school hours and it is good that the schools want to ensure student safety, doing something to make parents feel secure does nothing to actually make anyone more safe or more secure.

Being vigilant may be noble, but all the extra security since this little girl was murdered is still missing the point. She was never taken to school, so there was never a chance that school officials would have seen her on that fateful day. She also was not taken by a stranger as most people feared. The fact remains that children who are abused and/or murdered often find the perpetrator to be a family member or someone close to the family.

In the Minitare Public School District, they are going beyond vigilant and into the realm  of paranoia.

“The discussion at the developmental meeting next week will be to be aware, remember as many kids as you can and ask for help from other parents in being aware of surroundings.”

The district would like to install more cameras than it already has in place. Since much of the public funding has dried up for security cameras, Cody said he would welcome someone stepping forward to donate the equipment.

Asking parents to be aware of surrounds is akin to “see something say something.” It creates fear and panic when it isn’t necessary. Installing more cameras instills an atmosphere of distrust. It indicates that every single person who comes near the school is automatically a suspect whose every move must be watched and scrutinized.

“My concern as administrator is that situations will occur; we can’t control everything,” Cody said. “We’ll do the best we can do to keep students safe as long as they are on our property. We can only control the things we can control. That would go for all school districts.”

This is the sensible approach. Unfortunately, it’s buried at the end of the story where most people won’t see or read it because they’re too busy being afraid of the first part of the story. There is no way for a school district to control everything. You cannot predict how people are going to behave, nor can you completely control their behavior even when they are on your property. If this were possible, there would be no incidents of bullying, racism, or fighting at school.

Most adults know and understand when something is out of place and when it’s nothing to be concerned about. Creating a permanent atmosphere of fear and panic in people, particularly parents, only results in freedoms lost and innocent lives at risk. Protecting children is never a bad thing, but ignoring the facts of who really hurts children only results in adult lives being destroyed due to misguided accusations.

A group of Palestinian students who have won scholarships to study abroad should be getting ready for the new experience. Instead, they are stuck at home in Gaza because their government will not let them leave. Al Jazeera’s Stafanie Dekker reports from Gaza.

The Tupelo school district is considering the use of fingerprint scanners for breakfast and lunch in what they say will make lines move faster, be more accurate, and give students more time to eat. In hyping up the uses of fingerprint scanners, the same tired arguments are being retread as reasons for the use of scanners. If approved, the machines would replace the current system, which uses identification numbers of students.

Lynne Rogers, the Tupelo Public School District’s director of food services, made a presentation about the new technology to the school board last week. She said the machines would neither take nor store fingerprints of students. Instead, they would scan a student’s finger using several points for identification.

They would be most helpful during breakfast at the elementary schools, Rogers said. Although middle- and high-school students are generally able to remember their identification numbers, Rogers said, elementary students tend to forget them. Sometimes those students also don’t know their formal names, making it more difficult, and timely, to track them in the database in order to charge their accounts for the meal.

The process is a little easier at lunch, when students come by homeroom, Rogers said, but more difficult at breakfast when they arrive in random order.

First, it only takes a week or two to get to know the students who eat breakfast every single day. Second, you only need to learn the new students each year, thus you do not have a lot of students each year to learn the names of if they forget their identification numbers. Not doing this is simple laziness and inattentiveness to your job.

Second, if your students can’t remember a simple ID number and don’t even know their own names, your school has a lot more problems than getting everyone to remember their ID number.

As someone who has used these systems before, it is not difficult to remember names. Students that eat school lunches do so on a regular basis. It doesn’t take long to remember who eats, even if they come in random order. Students who can’t remember their ID number are also the same students day in and day out. It’s not that they can’t. They won’t. And, as long as you continue to look their information up, they aren’t going to be bothered with learning it.

Parents would be able to opt to not have their children use the finger scan but to instead continue to use their ID number.

Unless you plan on putting these children through a completely different line or making them wait until everyone with a fingerprint scan is finished first, the entire purpose of installing fingerprint scanners will be defeated before the program even begins. You are not going to get shorter lines. You will not have more time to eat. You will, however, have the same problems as before. If a parent opts out and the student doesn’t know their information or refuses to learn it, they’re still going to slow down the lines. Fancy fingerprint scanners aren’t going to change this.

The school board will decide a later date whether or not to use the scanners. Hopefully, they’ll do some research and see that they need better employees and not fancy equipment that will cost $12,350 to install without any real benefits.