Coming to a school near you soon: Students will be tracked via chips in IDs
By Francisco Vara-Orta
Updated 11:44 p.m., Thursday, May 24, 2012
Northside Independent School District plans to track students next year on two of its campuses using technology implanted in their student identification cards in a trial that could eventually include all 112 of its schools and all of its nearly 100,000 students.
District officials said the Radio Frequency Identification System (RFID) tags would improve safety by allowing them to locate students — and count them more accurately at the beginning of the school day to help offset cuts in state funding, which is partly based on attendance.
Northside, the largest school district in Bexar County, plans to modify the ID cards next year for all students attending John Jay High School, Anson Jones Middle School and all special education students who ride district buses. That will add up to about 6,290 students.
The school board unanimously approved the program late Tuesday but, in a rarity for Northside trustees, they hotly debated it first, with some questioning it on privacy grounds.
Luckily, there are ways to block RFID signals. I would hope that every single student uses them if this policy is put in place.
And the same people don’t want to require illegals prove their status?