In a display of perhaps the most impeccable timing in the history of blogging, Jeff Mattingly has submitted this post for The Watch, providing a unique perspective on the Clarity surveillance system being used in Belleville schools, from the beginning.
Thanks Jeff!
October 28, 2013 Belleville Board of Education Meeting
Seven months ago a friend said that I might want to attend tonight’s BoE meeting. The teachers were going take a stand on workplace intimidation and harassment. I was surprised because I hadn’t heard anything leading up to it.
There had been a lot of recent bad press accounts of the administration’s pending lawsuits. So I came and there were a lot of teachers there, a whole lot. So I signed in just in case I felt I might want my 5 minutes to speak during the public portion, as I do when moved to. The mood was serious and I settled in as a spectator.
The meeting came to order and soon came to “Committee Reports” from board members. When it was member Joe Longo’s turn, we learned that he had spearheaded and would be delivering the anticipated “security report” presentation to board members as well as the attending public.
It struck me curiously because there was no mention of it in the agenda, and seemed to come as a surprise to the attending public as well. The board came down from the stage to sit in the front row of the auditorium, and Mr. Longo was given the stage. The presentation was to include power point visuals, and an in-depth analysis of the comprehensive district-wide security initiative that was already being installed, and would soon be functional.
The only information I had about it at all prior to this meeting was a general accounting of a board meeting some months before in the only source of information Belleville has other than attending meetings yourself – the Belleville Times news print. It seemed excessive at the time but in my busy life I had forgotten about it in a tough economy that was ever more demanding of my time to make ends meet.
For the next one and three quarter hours I listened in amazement and ever increasing frustration to a presentation that I would characterize as an incredibly bad sales pitch of a security plan, that sounded more like they were building a maximum security prison system than presenting a safety initiative for children and staff.
In spite of mounting studies that show that these types of extremely intrusive security measures are a costly use of educational dollars, and are harmful and counter-productive to the desired nurturing environment that produces an effective education, this board saw fit to take it to unimaginable heights.
Grossly over reacting to a threat that we had never encountered, they began by hiring their own armed guards for all nine schools in addition to the three “resource officers” traditionally requested from our Belleville PD for the Middle and High Schools. They hastily contracted a 2 million dollar “surveillance and security system” that has only 3 other known uses in the country. With no input from staff or parents, they were implementing this system that even Joe Longo admitted he did not fully understand.
The system was bought from Clarity Technologies Group, LLC for installation, and employs a complex network of magnetic radio wave emitters that read embedded chips in the ID badges of students and staff. These readers can track those who wear these badges every move. These badges allegedly, as programmed, allow or deny entry to classrooms, restrooms, and other rooms of specialty use throughout the entire district.
Every classroom is equipped with high tech motorized cameras, replete with audio recording capabilities, including closets but (strangely for a “security system”) not in all hallways or stairwells. Also included are nurse’s offices and teacher’s lounges. This is coming from a non-responsive board that stands accused in lawsuits of workplace intimidation and harassment, and that do not allow their public proceeding to be viewed by the public on our local cable station.
They went on at a later date to hastily award an additional 1.2 million dollar, 5 year contract to Clarity to manage the daily administration of the system. During the “presentation” of that night and subsequent meetings, there has been no explanation offered as to where and how these recordings will be stored, for how long, how secure will they be, and who will have access to them.
Why would you have cameras in nurse’s offices where children might have to undress? How intimidated will children feel to confide in a teacher a need for special help now that they know they are being recorded? How will recordings affect parent/teacher conferences privileges and needs? Don’t teachers have a right to privacy in their lounges during lunch and breaks? Where is the line between safety and warrantless surveillance? Don’t children have a right to private conversations between each other even at school, in the lunchrooms?
What right does a school administration have to unilaterally impose such draconian measures on the public, on minors? In the name of security, our guaranteed personal freedoms are being violated. This is tantamount to being suspected and searched for guilt while having committed no crime. Adolescents are marked by rebellion and revolt, and are best calmed with understanding and tolerance. To make a child feel that they are not to be trusted, and in fact projected upon with feelings of guilt and suspicion can easily backfire, and create the very situation you profess to wish to avoid.
Mr. Longo has stated in print his belief that Belleville will be among the safest schools in the country, making a public spectacle of his declaration to individuals who may suffer pathologies that may cause them to seek distorted fame. These measures and statements are challenges that associations of various Sociologists, Psychologists and Psychiatrists caution against, that can create self fulfilling prophecies.
This was never thought out thoroughly, and moved at way too rapid a pace, with little investigation, and no public or staff input. It has political overtones that may exact a very high price that money will not be able to repay. It is time to stop, back up, and reboot the process through the proper channels of such weighty decisions that involve thousands of lives.
Not all things should be left in the hands of so few who are elected without policies and procedures in place that hold them accountable.
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