Washington school gives kids Covid ankle monitors, parents say 'it's for criminals'
A public high school in Washington state has been chastised for requiring student athletes to wear ankle bracelets to aid Covid-19 tracking and tracing operations, news outlets reported on Tuesday, August 23. Eatonville High School is employing taxpayer-funded ankle monitors to follow student athletes. However, not all parents are said to have approved of the action.
MEAWW has earlier reported on the steps that schools are taking to mitigate the spread of Covid-19. The American Civil Liberties Union (UCLA) on Tuesday filed a federal lawsuit over a state law that bans schools from requiring their students and employees to wear masks. Last week, Florida school board chairwoman Rosalind Osgood defied Ron DeSantis' mask mandate ban after three teachers died of Covid-19 within one day of one another.
READ MORE
'Angry' California mom goes viral after telling school board 'we won't comply' over Covid norms
Who is Lila Hartley? Florida girl, 12, writes letter urging school board to make masks mandatory
In Tuesday's news, the ankle monitors, built by a firm called Triax, were purchased by Eatonville High School for both coaches and students in high-contact and moderate-contact sports. The device is required by the school for students who participate in volleyball, basketball, football and soccer. Triax is the business that makes the device. The devices were purchased with funds from the American Rescue Plan, which requires that 20% of the money go to the elementary and secondary school disaster relief fund.
The 'TraceTag' features visual and auditory sensors that notify children when they get too close to one another, as well as contact-trace data that may be utilized to determine which students have had contact with other players who have tested positive for Covid-19, the Daily Mail reported. As a result, TraceTag might be deployed to notify a student if they've been in close contact with someone infected with the virus.
The device can be worn in the body or affixed to a hat or helmet, according to the manufacturer's website. At Eatonville, all vaccinated and unvaccinated kids must wear the devices, but only unvaccinated pupils must quarantine for 14 days if a positive case of Covid-19 is discovered in the contact-trace data. The gadget, which was designed to collect contact-trace data in the event of Covid-19 infections, is compared to ankle monitors worn by people on house arrest.
However, after it was reported online, the action prompted a significant uproar among parents, with many objecting to the device's resemblance to those used to follow criminals on bail or probation. "Over my dead body, My kids would not participate and very well may take them out of school and do online schooling if I had kids in that school. Ankle monitors are for criminals not children," the Mail quoted a parent, Holly Laubsch, commenting on a Facebook post.
“If a student or coach tests positive, we will have immediate information regarding athletes’ and coaches’ contacts, so we can more tightly determine who might need to quarantine,” the district said in an emailed statement, according to Mynorthwest.com. “Athletes and coaches not in contact with the player who tested positive can continue to participate in the sport," it adds.
While the school claims to have informed parents and obtained their approval to use the surveillance devices, not all parents were aware of this. One mother told the Post Millennial that she was not notified and that she did not sign any consent forms. According to the website, mum stated that the school's athletic director admitted to a "screw up" in not initially obtaining her consent.
When asked about the validity of the mother's statements, a school official did not comment. When asked if parents signed consent papers for all other youngsters who were given the monitoring device, they did not respond. She also claims that the school told her daughter to take the gadget out of her bag before her mother arrived, and that they would only allow her to take a few pictures of it.
“This system prevents taking students out of school and athletics unnecessarily. It allows us to keep more students engaged and involved in the class as well as athletic activities. This is a top priority for staff and families here in Eatonville. This school year we can expect numerous changes and for situations to be dynamic,” the school's statement reads. They also stated that the device did not function as a GPS and hence could not save the players' location or identity. Following the outcry, the school board will meet on Wednesday to discuss the programme in greater depth and its future.