Student-tracking system at Texas schools prompts privacy concerns

A Texas school district's plan to track students with microchips implanted in mandatory IDs has at least one parent charging it's an invasion of his daughter's privacy.

Beginning in the middle of October, roughly 4,200 students at John Jay High School and Anson Jones Middle School in San Antonio will be required to wear the ID cards that utilize radio frequency identification. The card, which will be worn on a lanyard around each student’s neck, will transmit location information via microchip to electronic readers throughout the campuses, Northside Independent School District spokesman Pascual Gonzalez told FoxNews.com.

“It is like GPS in the school,” Gonzalez said. “As administrators, we are charged with the safety of students in our schools. So within the four walls of Jay High School and Jones Middle School during the school day, we will always know where those kids are.”

The one-year pilot program, which will cost the district $261,000, is also expected to increase attendance, and could bring an additional $2 million to the district in state funding as a result, said Gonzalez, adding that the program will be reevaluated next summer.

“This allows us to quickly identify if any of those students reported absent are, in fact, in the school,” Gonzalez said in reference to students who may be elsewhere in the building during roll call. “And if they are, we find them, get them to class and report them present.”

“This is non-threatening technology. This is not surveillance.”

- NISD spokesman Pascual Gonzalez

Parents have been “supportive” of the new program, Gonzalez said, with the exception of one parent, Steven Hernandez, and his daughter Andrea, both of whom participated in a protest against the technology.

“He is the lone protester,” Gonzalez said. “For us, this technology represents an efficient way to locate a student and to always know where our students are in our care.”

Attempts to reach Andrea Hernandez on Wednesday were unsuccessful, but the John Jay sophomore told KSN.com she thinks many students will rebel against the new policy by stashing the ID cards in their lockers.

“It makes me uncomfortable,” she told the website. “It’s an invasion of my privacy.”

Hernandez believes the system isn’t necessary because the district already employs digital cameras in all high schools and middle schools. She’s also worried what might happen if the technology gets hacked or misused.

"With a smart phone you can use the option to use your locator, but this I can't turn it off," Hernandez said.

Other parents, meanwhile, have indicated they support the new program.

"You never know when a disaster is going to happen and to know where your child is at least you have that card to know where your kid's at all times," Michelle Esquivel told FOX 29.

Another parent, Ernest Castro, said the safety of his child is the utmost importance.

"I'm always worried about my daughter being at school," he told FOX 29.

In a letter to parents, John Jay High School administrators assured them that the ID cards will store no personal information and that they’ll work only on school grounds.

“Think how important this will be in the case of an emergency,” the letter reads. “In addition, the ‘smart’ student ID card will be used in the breakfast and lunch lines in the cafeteria and to check out books from the library. Because all students will be required to wear their ‘smart’ ID, staff will be able to quickly identify Jay students inside the school.”

Despite those assurances, a coalition of privacy and civil liberties organizations and experts have called for a moratorium on the technology, including the American Civil Liberties Union and Liz McIntyre, author of "Spy Chips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track your Every Purchase and Watch Your Every Move."

"These tags are always on," McIntyre told FoxNews.com. "There's no off switch on these things."

McIntyre, who began studying the technology in 2002, said she's primarily concerned with the electronic readers getting into the wrong hands or for students to attempt to use them fraudulently, perhaps by leaving them at school while being elsewhere.

"We're concerned that students could leave the tags in school and then leave," she said.

In a statement released last month, Dr. Katherine Albrecht, director of Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering, warned against an impending backlash against the technology, which is currently in use only in two public school districts in Texas.

“Schools, of all places, should be teaching children how to participate in a free democratic society, not conditioning them to be tracked like cattle," Albrecht's statement read. "Districts planning to use RFID should brace themselves for a parent backlash, protests and lawsuits.”

Gonzalez rejected that criticism, saying the pilot program and the “smart” ID cards have been used successfully in Houston’s Spring Independent School District for at least the past five years.

“This is non-threatening technology,” he said. “This is not surveillance.”

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Chicago teachers to go on strike after talks with district fail

CHICAGO –  Chicago teachers went on strike Monday for the first time in 25 years after their union and district officials failed to reach a contract agreement despite intense weekend negotiations that the union said were productive but still failed to adequately address issues such as job security and teacher evaluations.

The two sides were not far apart on compensation, but were on other issues, including health benefits -- teachers want to keep what they have now -- and a new teacher evaluation system based partly on students' standardized test scores, Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis said.

"This is a difficult decision and one we hoped we could have avoided," she said. "We must do things differently in this city if we are to provide our students with the education they so rightfully deserve."

Mayor Rahm Emanuel condemned the union's decision, and said the negotiations could be resolved if the two sides kept talking, "given how close we are."

"This is not a strike I wanted," Emanuel said. "It was a strike of choice ... it's unnecessary, it's avoidable and it's wrong. "

More than 26,000 teachers and support staff were expected to hit the picket lines early Monday, while the school district and parents carried out plans for keeping nearly 400,000 students safe and occupied while classes remain empty in the coming days in the nation's third largest school district.

Both Emanuel and union officials have much at stake. The walkout comes at a time when unions and collective bargaining by public employees have come under criticism in many parts of the country, and all sides are closely monitoring who might emerge with the upper hand in the Chicago dispute.

The timing also may be inopportune for Emanuel, a former White House chief of staff whose city administration is wrestling with a spike in murders and shootings in some city neighborhoods and who just agreed to take a larger role in fundraising for President Barack Obama's re-election campaign.

As the strike deadline approached, parents spent Sunday worrying about how much their children's education might suffer and where their kids will go while they're at work.

School officials said they will open more than 140 schools between 8:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. so children can eat lunch and breakfast in a district where many students receive free meals. The district asked community organizations to provide additional programs for students, and a number of churches, libraries and other groups plan to offer day camps and other activities. But it's not clear how many families will send their children to the added programs.

"They're going to lose learning time," said Beatriz Fierro, whose daughter is in the fifth grade on the city's Southwest Side. "And if the whole afternoon they're going to be free, it's bad. Of course you're worried."

Eric Ferrer, a cook, said his children can stay home Monday with his wife, who works in a store. But if the strike goes more than one day, they would have a problem -- one that he sees no way to solve.

"My wife is off tomorrow, (so) we can keep them at home," said Ferrer, as he sat in a McDonald's restaurant on the city's Southwest Side with his wife and their 8-year-old son and 3-year-old daughter. "She works the next day (and) so do I."

School board President David Vitale first announced Sunday night that talks had broken off, despite the school board offering what he called a fair and responsible contract that would cover four years and meet most of the union's demands. He said the talks with the union had been "extraordinarily difficult."

Emanuel said the district had offered the teachers a 16 percent pay raise over four years, doubling an earlier offer.

Lewis said she would not prioritize the issues, saying that they all were important to teachers.

That included concern over a new evaluation that she said would be based too heavily on students' standardized test scores, which she said would be unfair to teachers because it could not adequately account for outside factors that affect student performance, including poverty, violence and homelessness.

She said the evaluations could result in 6,000 teachers losing their jobs within two years.

City officials said they did not believe that was true, but said the union would not tell them how they came to that conclusion.

Emanuel said the evaluation would not count in the first year, as teachers and administrators worked out any kinks. Schools CEO Jean-Claude Brizard said the evaluation was mandated by state law but "was not developed to be a hammer," but to help teachers get better.

Emanuel said the union should have postponed the strike because an agreement is close. He also said his negotiating team would be available all night if the union was willing to talk, but Lewis said negotiations would resume Monday.

The strike is the latest flashpoint in a very public and often contentious battle between the mayor and the union.

When he took office last year, Emanuel inherited a school district facing a $700 million budget shortfall. Not long after, his administration rescinded 4 percent raises for teachers. He then asked the union to reopen its contract and accept 2 percent pay raises in exchange for lengthening the school day for students by 90 minutes. The union refused.

Emanuel, who promised a longer school day during his campaign, then attempted to go around the union by asking teachers at individual schools to waive the contract and add 90 minutes to the day. He halted the effort after being challenged by the union before the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board.

The district and union agreed in July on how to implement the longer school day, striking a deal to hire back 477 teachers who had been laid off rather than pay regular teachers more to work longer hours. That raised hopes the contract dispute would be settled soon, but bargaining continued on the other issues.

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