Northside keeping electronic eye on students

Tira Starr, an 8th grader at Anson Jones Middle School, shows her ID badge as students change classes. Students at the school are using new identification badges that have a built in chip that enables school attendance workers to see where a student is while on campus. Oct. 1, 2012. less Tira Starr, an 8th grader at Anson Jones Middle School, shows her ID badge as students change classes. Students at the school are using new identification badges that have a built in chip that enables school ... more Photo: BOB OWEN, San Antonio Express-News Photo: BOB OWEN, San Antonio Express-News Image 1 of / 8 Caption Close Northside keeping electronic eye on students 1 / 8 Back to Gallery

Like she now does every school day morning, Jones Middle School attendance secretary Felicia Canales logged on to a controversial new monitoring system, looking for absent students who were not really absent.

She typed in a name Monday and glanced at a computer screen to see a flashing green dot on a campus floor plan, showing where one of the system's dozens of detectors had picked up a signal from the student's ID card.

Canales headed over, looked around and located him fairly quickly, in a classroom.

All told, she found six students that morning who had missed their 9:35 a.m. roll call for various reasons — and by doing so, she increased state funding for Northside Independent School District, which gets $30 per student counted in attendance.

Northside, the first local district to test a “radio frequency identification” tracking system, picked Jones Middle School and Jay High School for the pilot program. With a combined 4,200 students, both have struggled with attendance issues.

If it generates significant extra income from a state that has slashed education funding, the district could install it at all 112 of its campuses.

The school board's approval of the RFID program in May drew nationwide attention, similar to that faced by the Houston area's Spring ISD and Santa Fe ISD when they installed tracking systems in recent years.

Northside's decision generated alarm among national conservative media outlets, criticism from the American Civil Liberties Union and a protest outside the middle school on the first day of classes in August.

But after a few weeks of carrying and using the ID cards, students at Jones shrug when asked about the uproar. Some have decorated their badges with stickers or dangle them from Hello Kitty lanyards.

A few said they're pleased with the faster lunch line — a card reader has replaced the need to keyboard their ID information, yielding an extra five to 10 minutes to eat. They can self-check-out books at their school library, where librarian Veronica Barajas is the only staffer left after budget cuts forced the loss of 1,000 district employees through attrition.

“Some of us don't like it, or think it was weird at first, but I think it's teaching us responsibility,” said Tira Starr, 14. “We're over it.”

Most parents and students have accepted the program, district officials said. The goals are to boost attendance reporting, allow officials to know where students are and make campus services more efficient, Northside Superintendent Brian Woods said.

More Information Northside ISD website about RFID tags

Average attendance at Jones Middle School is near Northside's lowest, about 94 percent, so Principal Wendy Reyes welcomed it.

“At first I had hesitation, as I didn't know how the technology worked. But I see a lot of the benefits at hand now,” Reyes said.

Both schools plan to more strictly enforce students' obligation to wear the badges, starting next week. Reyes doesn't think that will be a problem.

The system mainly is used for counting attendance in the morning. It does give administrators the ability to locate a student any time of day, and it keeps an electronic history of each badge, allowing operators to retrace a student's general movements. It can't track them off campus.

And it can't stop truancy, Reyes said, adding: “If a student wants to leave campus or not show up, we know using these badges isn't going to affect that decision.”

The detectors track the RFID chips, not the kids. A student could leave a badge somewhere at school to evade detection elsewhere, and some have tried to remove the chip, Reyes said.

A San Antonio firm, Wade/Garcia & Associates Inc., developed the system and has contracts with Northside and the two Houston-area districts that use it. Samantha Finch, a project manager with the firm, said other districts have expressed interest.

Northside in June approved a $256,470 contract with the firm for the pilot program. Woods said the benefits will outweigh the costs.

In the long run, Northside could recover an estimated $1.7 million annually in attendance-based funding from the state if RFID systems were implemented districtwide, officials said.

The protestors in August included only one Northside parent, Steven Hernandez; most were from Austin and Dallas and cited political, religious, and health concerns.

Members of the group have been vocal at Northside board meetings, where Hernandez has been joined by one other Jay High School parent in speaking against it.

Hernandez said requiring his daughter to wear the badge, with or without the RFID tag, is a violation of their religious freedom, citing a passage from the biblical Book of Revelation. He hasn't filed a lawsuit but said he plans to go first through a grievance process.

The district has offered to allow Hernandez's daughter to wear her badge with the chip extracted, Northside spokesman Pascual Gonzalez said. Hernandez said he has declined that offer. Gonzalez said such exceptions will be allowed on a case-by-case basis but there is no general “opt-out” policy.

Students can be disciplined for failing to wear the badge. If they lose one, they have to pay $15 to replace it.

Laura Evans, the PTA president at Jones, said parents didn't raise concerns about the tracking system at a recent meeting.

“If kids are not in class, we do not get the funding to educate them and miss out on money when they are actually there,” Evans said. “I mean, we hold the school district accountable for taking care of our kids so I'd imagine as a parent I'd want them to know where they are on campus.”

fvara-orta@express-news.net

Twitter: @fvaraorta