CitizensLighthouse

What is the effect of training kids to submit to surveillance all day? China does it—and then uses the surveillance to social credit score citizens and limit freedom. What is the psychological impact on kids from cameras in classrooms? Will it inhibit kids from asking questions to learn or increase anxiety?

The motivations and interest in classroom cameras are understandable but in short: it is a CAN OF WORMS and a SLIPPERLY SLOPE that drags along unintended consequences.

1/ FERPA is an outdated federal law “protecting” student privacy. It was weakened (not strengthened) many years ago.  Schools can now designate vendors as “school officials” and then share your kids’ data with those vendors and they can do it without parental consent.

2/ FERPA is supposed to protect privacy, but IMO it doesn’t work well at all. There are serious student data privacy issues with EdTech and surveillance that continue to go unaddressed by school districts and legislators around the country, including Florida.

3/ Despite Florida’s Parental Rights Law, data we don’t want collected will still be collected even though it really serves no educational purpose.

4/ If cameras in classrooms were allowed under Florida statutes via HB1055, and school districts went on to approve implementation: would cameras actually be implemented according to the limited protections in the bill?

5/ The surveillance proposal, HB1055, requires in class audio recordings, BUT last year Florida passed a Parental Rights Law that states: “The right to consent in writing before the state or any of its political subdivisions makes a video or voice recording of his or her minor child”.

It appears that HB1055 is proposing to remove that parental right to consent!

HB1055 proposes: “Each video camera…must be…capable of all of the following: 1. Visually monitoring and recording all areas of the classroom. 2. Recording audio from all areas of the classroom.”

6/ Even if an opt-in or opt-out of surveillance did exist, will the school district ask?  If they ask, how are they going to implement an opt-out for just a subset of children in every class and elective?

7/ The Parental Rights Law passed last year states parents have “The right to consent in writing before a biometric scan of his or her minor child is made, shared, or stored.”

As well, Florida Statute 1002.222 states: Schools may not “Collect, obtain, or retain information on the…biometric information of a student…Examples of biometric information include…a fingerprint or hand scan, a retina or iris scan, a voice print, or a facial geometry scan [facial recognition].”

Note: the above FL Statute was passed after students were iris scanned in Polk County, FL with NO parental consent.  Read about iris scanning here.

8/ How do legislators expect school districts to “Conceal the identity of any student who appears in a video recording, but is not involved in the alleged incident…”  without facial geometry scanning (facial recognition) or voice prints?!!  How are they doing this now on their existing cameras?

9/ Our Florida district can’t or won’t give parents: vendor data dictionaries (list of data collected), metadata that vendors have collected on children, or a list of the vendors who have received or collected data on the students. Does the district not know what data is collected?

10/ Under FERPA, school districts must be in direct control of the vendor (school official) with respect to maintenance and use of student data: but are they?

11/ FERPA creates limitations; there is a limit to what school officials can do with data and what data they access. Yet, if school districts don’t know what is collected or everything vendor software and algorithms do then how can the district ensure the limitation is enforced?

How does the school district know a vendor isn’t running facial recognition or training AI using camera footage if they don’t maintain direct control of data or don’t know what is collected or created by a vendor? Who would ever know?

13/ Classroom camera footage is probably not going to an offline server in the front office. It will likely be transmitted and stored in the BIGTECH cloud online. This would mean your school district is sharing that footage of your child with third parties.

14/ When a vendor says data is not 100% secure, could that also mean 80% secure, or 50%, or 25%?

15/ How is the data accessed and viewed? Probably through third party software. How secure is that software?  Your data will likely be subject to their privacy policy and often these third parties are private companies.

16/ Who inspects vendor hardware and software for vulnerabilities that might open the door to unapproved access or leaking of footage? Who inspects the transmission of data to ensure it is only going where it is supposed to go and that it is encrypted as advertised?

17/ Are those cameras manufactured in the U.S. or China? Federal law banned Chinese cameras in U.S. government for a reason.

Why isn’t this kind of attention focused on protecting the privacy of our children in schools from companies, government, and foreign countries?

18/ Who controls the data shared with and collected by third party companies under FERPA? The school district is supposed to have direct control, but do they really?  Again, our district can’t/won’t tell us all specific data collected by these third party companies.

19/ Who oversees what student data is shared with a vendor’s (“school official”) partners? If companies use partners (other companies) for performing some of their functions, then when the data goes to a vendor (or “school official”) is it really being shared with many vendors?

20/ Under FERPA, would parents actually be able to get access to the camera footage, or will it be a battle to obtain if schools use FERPA to block access to footage? Either way you lose privacy and the possibility is that no benefit materializes but plenty of unintended consequences could arise.

21/ Dangers: Hacking, leaking, tracking, dossier creation, use of incorrect data in dossiers that you cannot see (ahem: district refuses to hand it ALL over) that could damage college or career opportunities, data used against students maliciously (FBI EdTech warning),…

So, could camera footage be used against students in unexpected ways?

22/ Do vendors sell the data: Eh, no? But most policies I have read indicate the company can transfer the data in a merger or acquisition.  Is this what happened when Chinese NetDragon bought the EdTech company Edmodo that held data on U.S. schoolchildren? Might that be a national security issue?

23/ The education sector is a common target for cyberattacks due to the prolific amount of data stored on children.  One big company reportedly boasted about how much data they hold on students.  Some companies might use anonymized data for training their Artificial Intelligence (AI).

24/ Are companies able to effectively “anonymize” data?  Does anyone contact you when the data (anonymized or not) is researched, used in analytics, or artificial intelligence?

What if anonymized data can be re-identified?  Some say it is hard to truly anonymize data; so how well are companies performing this task? How would you know?

25/ BOTTOMLINE:  If they are collecting student data and storing it online, there are risks.  Just do some searches on the ransomware that has targeted schools. Florida Virtual Schools reportedly leaked student data years ago.

26/ Yes, there are more issues: proper configuration of the cameras, maintenance of firmware and thus ongoing security, and data retention policies: SPECIFIC maximum periods that data can be held (not just minimums) so data isn’t held indefinitely.

27/ Does anyone at the school district verify data retention policies are carried out on an ongoing basis?  Do you trust your school district to validate that data was deleted?  Are they permitted access to vendor servers/backups to validate data was deleted?  Do you trust the vendor?

Was data properly deleted? Does the school district know all locations where the data is stored, distributed, backed up, and archived for every vendor?  How do districts verify if all copies held by vendors were deleted and what do school districts define as “deleted” – is it wiped or just deleted?

Lifewire explains: “when you delete something…you don’t remove it from existence, you just hide it from yourself. The actual data that makes up whatever you deleted is still there,…”

HB1055 instructs the data “shall be deleted or otherwise made unretrievable”.  Why “shall” instead of “must” and why the use of OR?  How does the statute define “deleted”? Does this language mean there is an obligation to completely eliminate the data from all electronic storage locations?

28/ What if the child just doesn’t want to be surveilled all day? Do they have to give up their constitutional right to privacy in order to receive a public education?

29/ Kids cannot pick another public school system; will schools have surveilled and unsurveilled classrooms? How will that work with teacher shortages? A student cannot change schools—they have one school system to pick from…unless their parents move.  Kind of like how people are leaving California for Florida.

30/ Lastly: PRIVACY is a human right and essential to FREEDOM.

After all this, it sure seems easier and safer to just stop collecting so much data.  So, why are they collecting so much data?

Hillsborough County School Board (ahem: IMO law breakers!) recently approved spending $362,500 annually on Panorama Social Emotional Learning (SEL) surveys.  It was not spent on reading, writing, or arithmetic; it was spent on a contract with Panorama Education for SURVEYS asking our children about personal social and emotional stuff.  SEL sounds good, but it’s not.

In 2020 Hillsborough schools described the Panorama SEL Survey as a “New district-wide tool to gather data to support student SEL needs.” ¹

What do they mean by “data”? How sensitive are those questions in the survey? Here’s a thought: the school district should publish the survey online!  But does the company allow that?

The State of Florida publishes their student risky behavior surveys because parents and citizens have a right to see its’ content.

In August this year the school district explained: “Panorama will provide educators with a research-backed survey, and actionable data reports to support each student’s SEL needs” (Aug 12, 2021 School Board Agenda Item Details).

Oh…they’ve used the words “research-backed”; does that make surveying children on personal and sensitive topics a legitimate activity?

• Will the children have “SEL needs” if their survey answers don’t conform to a specific ideology?
• Educators get actionable reports? What about the parents?
• What do they mean by “actionable data report”? Could children be manipulated through the actions taken from an “actionable data report”?
• What will Panorama do with all that sensitive data? Could it get hacked? Because, hey, what data isn’t getting hacked and sold on the dark web these days? With whom is aggregate data shared (please don’t leave out any “trusted” partners or researchers)?

The school district conveniently forgot to mention educators are not trained mental health professionals or psychologists, but survey results will be “Available to all district leaders, schools, and teachers to explicitly teach SEL skills and embed SEL strategies with academics.”

It would be nice know the school district’s definition of “academics”.

Were parents told about the survey with enough time to opt out?  Parents should know their PPRA rights to be informed prior to administration of surveys that collect certain kinds of information on students.

Panorama describes its’ Student SEL Survey as follows²:

Wow, that is quite a survey and, yes, Panorama misspelled social as “socials”; unless Panorama means they survey how students feel about social media apps they use? 🤷‍♀️ Is Panorama measuring a child’s self-perception on nebulous topics encompassed by the words “social and emotional skills”? Are they assessing students on their self-confidence and emotional state? What does “more” mean?

Are we in the Matrix, where up is coded as down, and feelings and data gathering are the new education?  Who needs to learn that Soh Cah Toa are acronyms used to remember trigonometric formulas when children can have their “socials” measured, assessed, and addressed with actionable reports?

This seems like another contract funding a private company to make big bucks off our children.  Remember all those collected bits and bytes are like gold.  But, is it worse than what seems like prying private eyes and money money makin’?

The district leader named on the Panorama Service Order (dated July 2021) was Hillsborough County School District (HCSD) Czar: Chief of Climate and Culture.  Why is that a leadership role in our district when we have had serious problems with literacy?

Where is the study substantiating that $10 million on digital platforms like “I-Ready, Achieve3000 and SIPPS” are (statistically significantly) helping our students?  Who is really benefitting from the $10 million in taxpayer dollars spent on platforms owned by for-profit private companies while we face financial crisis after financial crisis?

A $3 billion+ budget is very big.  As children, some were taught that pennies make nickels, nickels make dimes, and dimes make dollars.  Does someone need to explain how it all adds up to our school district?

Has the climate and culture in that ugly upside-down pyramid building in downtown Tampa (HCSD headquarters) caused the district to stray so far from its’ core purpose that the school board thinks we need Attorney General Merrick Garland’s son-in-law’s “woke” Panorama Education Surveys?

SEL has been a growing problem in our district for many years and has flown under the radar.  For those that don’t know, SEL has been taught in the sixth grade elective rotational program.  Did your school tell you that?

Hillsborough Schools even had a couple of district employees working on an SEL paper published in 2018 by the Aspen Institute, a progressive institute.  The paper was authored by Hillsborough School’s “SEL Coordinator” and the school district’s Assistant Superintendent was one of the paper’s “distinguished educators” that contributed to its’ “Consensus Statements of Practice”.

In 2018, I asked many questions about this SEL paper, like if the district was allowing employees to “[take] direction from” the institute while on district (taxpayer) time: no answer.  But let’s get back to Panorama.

According to Forbes, AG Merrick Garland’s son-in-law is co-founder and president of Panorama Education and:

“…Panorama Education sells surveys to school districts across the country that focus on the local “social and emotion climate.” These surveys are then used as justification for new curriculum from other providers that some parents call critical race theory and find objectionable.” [emphasis added]

See how that works: money money makin’ leads to more money money makin’. So now we need to BUY surveys to the tune of $362,000 annually, no wonder we can’t find enough money to fix air conditioners.  What can the school district do without third party for profit companies doing it for them?

This is the Attorney General of the United States, AG Merrick Garland.  Was it a good idea to use a letter from the National School Board Association (NSBA) as the reason to send a not so subtle message to moms and dads (that we felt was a threat to watch our mouths) because the FBI was on the case?!

When did it become OK for a school district to programmatically nose itself into a student’s personal thoughts and feelings while attempting to silence parents who disagree?  The U.S. government has no business in local education.  Parents are NOT “domestic terrorists” for speaking up against poorly managed and out-of-control school districts with board members acting like dictators over their fiefdoms.

It appears that thanks to actions of the NSBA and AG Merrick Garland, we now have a teacher calling parents domestic terrorists.  And by the way, it’s too late to retract your statement or apologize because your message was received:

Teacher sings about how parents are terrorists pic.twitter.com/uw1UyflDtt

— Libs of Tik Tok (@libsoftiktok) October 21, 2021

But why do Florida school districts have so much power? The home rule powers given to school districts might be the answer.  Local elections are very important and should not be overlooked.

Social and emotional learning (SEL) surveys have nothing to do with the job of public schools: teaching math, language arts, sciences, and U.S. history (check out the price on that book and compare to the prices on the books the district purchases).

Will the school district respond to a records request for a copy of the Panorama Survey? After all, they have refused for over a year to fulfill a request for data dictionaries on all the EdTech companies they use.  That is like asking for the list of all the stuff these companies can possibly collect on your kids.

Private for-profit companies should not be designing surveys that collect our children’s personal beliefs, thoughts, or feelings. Parents are being pushed aside like they don’t matter.

Can’t wait for a copy!

P.S. If that wasn’t enough to peruse here is some extra reading on school surveys in Florida:

Next we will find out they’ve been surveying our kids on risky (wink wink) habits, asking them about activities many would not think of doing. Oh no, turns out schools already do that too!

The latest survey is linked from the Florida Department of Health.  The questions cover sex, drugs, etc. It is pretty disgusting to give this to a child; is it possible that shoving nearly 90 questions about risky behavior in front of the innocent teens might make a child wonder: if they are asking these questions, then kids do this stuff, if kids do this stuff then am I different and should I try this stuff like my peers?  Here we are again, gotta get that data!  Next thing they’ll be asking to track your kids too!

Here is another Florida Department of Health linked 2019 risky behavior survey linked for middle schools, and another middle and high school survey called the Florida Youth Tobacco Survey (FYTS).

¹ The Dec 15, 2020 School Board Meeting Attachment includes the following language:

“Panorama SEL Survey: New district-wide tool to gather data to support student SEL needs. Available to all district leaders, schools, and teachers to explicitly teach SEL skills and embed SEL strategies with academics.”

² The August 12, 2021 School Board Meeting attached statement of work with Panorama.