Los Angeles -- A suburban Los Angeles school
district is now looking at the public postings on social media by middle
and high school students, searching for possible violence, drug use,
bullying, truancy and suicidal threats.
The district in Glendale,
California, is paying $40,500 to a firm to monitor and report on 14,000
middle and high school students' posts on Twitter, Facebook and other
social media for one year.
Though critics liken the
monitoring to government stalking, school officials and their contractor
say the purpose is student safety.
As classes began this
fall, the district awarded the contract after it earlier paid the firm,
Geo Listening, $5,000 last spring to conduct a pilot project monitoring
9,000 students at three high schools and a middle school. Among the
results was a successful intervention with a student "who was speaking
of ending his life" on his social media, said Chris Frydrych, CEO of the
firm.
That intervention was
significant because two students in the district committed suicide the
past two years, said Superintendent Richard Sheehan. The suicides
occurred at a time when California has reduced mental health services in
schools, Sheehan said.
"We were able to save a
life," Sheehan said, adding the two recent suicides weren't outside the
norm for school districts. "It's just another avenue to open up a
dialogue with parents about safety."
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In another recent
incident, a student posted a photo of what appeared to be a gun, and a
subsequent inquiry determined the gun was fake, Sheehan said.
Still, school administrators spoke with the parents of the student, who wasn't disciplined, the superintendent said.
"We had to educate the
student on the dangers" of posting such photos, Sheehan said. "He was a
good kid. ... It had a good ending."
In fact, no student has
yet to be disciplined under the monitoring, but it's not out of the
question if analysts find a message warranting action, such as a threat
of a campus shooting, Sheehan said this week.
"I can see turning it over to police. That would be a situation in which discipline would follow," he said.
Frydrych's firm scours
the social media postings of Glendale students aged 13 and older -- the
age at which parental permission isn't required for the school's
contracted monitoring -- and sends a daily report to principals on which
students' comments could be causes for concern, Frydrych said.
The company won't
disclose its methods and practices in gathering the students' messages,
but it does use key words in its searches. The firm also didn't disclose
how it confirms the youths are indeed students of the district.
To do the work, Frydrych
employs no more than 10 full-time staffers -- as well as "a larger
portion" of contract workers across the globe who labor a maximum of
four hours a day because "the content they read is so dark and heavy,"
Frydrych said.
"It's mostly kids hanging onto a thread of life," Frydrych said, "and they're posting to people also hanging on to a thread."
He declined to disclose
how many school campuses have retained his firm, founded this past
January in Hermosa Beach, California. Frydrych has been providing
technology services to school districts the past 10 years.
Geo Listening also
monitors whether students are talking about drug use, cutting class or
violence. The firm even ascertains whether pupils are using their
smartphone during class time, Frydrych said.
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While critics say the
Glendale schools' contract is an invasion of privacy, Frydrych said his
firm helps schools bridge a digital-age communications "chasm."
"Parents and school
district personnel -- they are not able to effectively listen to the
conversation where it's happening now," Frydrych said. "The notion about
talking in class is about as old-fashioned as a Studebaker, no offense
to the makers of the car.
"When was the last time
you sent a kid to the principal's office for talking in class too much? I
just don't think it happens too much. So what we kept seeing is the
chasm keeps building between how students communicate and the ability to
tell adults about what's going on in their lives," he said. "I thought
we could bridge that gap."
Some experts in digital media and privacy, however, take exception.
"This is the government
essentially hiring a contractor to stalk the social media of the kids,"
said Lee Tien, senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier
Foundation, a nonprofit that defends privacy, free speech and consumer
rights.
"When the government --
and public schools are part of the government -- engages in any kind of
line-crossing and to actually go and gather information about people
away from school, that crosses a line," Tien said.
He disagreed with school officials who say they are monitoring only public postings.
"People say that's not
private: It's public on Facebook. I say that's just semantics. The
question is what is the school doing? It's not stumbling into students
-- like a teacher running across a student on the street. This is the
school sending someone to watch them," Tien said.
Sandy Russell, president
of the school district's PTA, said parents have many questions about
the monitoring, a topic that will be addressed later this month when the
superintendent makes his regular appearance at a PTA meeting.
Parents want to know how and why this is being done, Russell said.
"If it supports a child
in a difficult situation -- whether it's bullying or stress level -- and
if it helps, any parent would be thrilled to have the help. But how is
that happening?" Russell said.
"When you find something
you're concerned about, what are you doing? Do you approach the child,
with or without the parents? What does this mean? When people don't have
information, they make up scenarios," Russell said. "Some of the
concerns I've heard is when kids say something nasty about a teacher,
will they get in trouble? I understand that's not even remotely
possible."
Superintendent Sheehan said students won't be disciplined for commonplace criticism.
"As far as anything said about teachers, as long as it's appropriate, it will be ignored," he said.
Frydrych's firm doesn't hack into private postings by students, nor their e-mail or text messages.
"I find it interesting
that people keep asking if we're doing something illegal or snooping or
eavesdropping, but what we're actually doing is looking at public
posts," Frydrych said. "We don't see any private posts."
Students can adjust their privacy settings if they don't want the world to see their tweets or Facebook updates.
Frydrych's analysts stay
abreast of the symbols, phonetic spellings, abbreviations, initials and
other code-speak that youths type on social media.
Hate, for example, could
be spelled "h8," and teens may refer to drugs with such words as "red,"
"rolling," and "blunt," Frydrych said.
In another example,
Frydrych's firm learned how youths use drugs such as liquid hashish
through vaporizers, or "vapes," which are devices like electronic
cigarettes that allow for inhalation without creating smoke, Frydrych
said.
Teachers may not be
aware that students are dipping their mouths into their jacket in order
to take a hit off their "vapor pen," Frydrych said.
Frydrych's team will be
able to spot whether the student or a classmate posts a public message
about that activity -- with a message stating, for example, "can't
believe a kid is getting high in geography right now, sucking on their
vape," Frydrych said.
What school officials do with the daily findings of Geo Listening is up the district, Frydrych said.
"This isn't about our company questioning parents," he said. "We fully respect the challenges of being parents.
"We enforce the code of
student conduct for every school we serve" by compiling a day-by-day
report, he said. "It's up to the district to handle it."
His firm is about to
expand schools' monitoring capacity with a new smartphone app that
allows students and parents to anonymously report to and correspond with
school officials about conduct violations.
"Honestly, we're not
spying on kids. Can we focus back on the problem: The problem is we're
not listening effectively," Frydrych said. "And we're shifting that."
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