Texas schools punish students who refuse to be tracked with microchips

http://rt.com/usa/news/texas-school-id-hernandez-033/

A school district in Texas came under fire earlier this year when it announced that it would require students to wear microchip-embedded ID cards at all times. Now students who refuse to be monitored say they are feeling the repercussions.
Since October 1, students at John Jay High School and Anson Jones Middle School in San Antonia, Texas have been asked to attend class clasping onto photo ID cards equipped with radio-frequency identification chips to keep track of each and every pupil’s personal location. Educators insist that the endeavor is being rolled out in Texas to relax the rampant truancy rates devastating the state’s school and the subsequent funding they are failing to receive as a result, and pending the program’s success the RFID chips could soon come to 112 schools in all and affect nearly 100,000 students.
Some pupils say they are already seeing the impact, though, and it’s not one they are very anxious to experience. Students who refuse to walk the schoolhouse halls with a location-sensitive sensor in their pocket or around their neck are being tormented by instructors and being barred from participating in certain school-wide functions, with some saying they are even being turned away from common areas like cafeterias and libraries.
Andrea Hernandez, a sophomore at John Jay, says educators have ignored her pleas to have her privacy respected and have told her she can’t participate in school elections if she doesn’t submit to the tracking program.
To Salon, Hernandez says subjecting herself to constant monitoring by way of wearing a RFID chip is comparable to clothing herself in the “mark of the beast.” When she reached out to WND.com to reveal the school’s response, though, she told them that she was threatened with exclusion from picking a homecoming king and queen for not adhering to the rules.
"I had a teacher tell me I would not be allowed to vote because I did not have the proper voter ID," Hernandez told WND. "I had my old student ID card which they originally told us would be good for the entire four years we were in school. He said I needed the new ID with the chip in order to vote."
Even after Hernandez politely refused to wear an RFID chip, Deputy Superintendent Ray Galindo offered a statement that suggests that both the student’s religious and civil liberty-anchored arguments will only allow her some leeway for so long.
“We are simply asking your daughter to wear an ID badge as every other student and adult on the Jay campus is asked to do,” Galindo wrote to the girl’s parents, WND reports. If she is allowed to forego the tracking now, he continued, it could only be a matter of time before the school signs off on making location-monitoring mandatory and the repercussions will be more than just revoking voting rights for homecoming contests.
“I urge you to accept this solution so that your child’s instructional program will not be affected. As we discussed, there will be consequences for refusal to wear an ID card as we begin to move forward with full implementation,” Galindo continued.
The girl’s father, Steve Hernandez, tells WND that the school has been somewhat willing to work with the daughter’s demands, but insists that her family “would have to agree to stop criticizing the program” and start publically supporting it.
“I told him that was unacceptable because it would imply an endorsement of the district’s policy and my daughter and I should not have to give up our constitutional rights to speak out against a program that we feel is wrong,” Mr. Hernandez responded.
By reversing the poor attendance figures, the Northside Independent School District is expected to collect upwards of $2 million in state funding, with the program itself costing around one-quarter of that to roll out and another $136,005 annually to keep it up and running. The savings the school stands to make in the long run won’t necessarily negate the other damages that could arise: Heather Fazio, of Texans for Accountable Government tells WND that for $30 she filed a Freedom of Information Act request and received the names and addresses of every student in the school district.
“Using this information along with an RFID reader means a predator could use this information to determine if the student is at home and then track them wherever they go. These chips are always broadcasting so anyone with a reader can track them anywhere,” she says.
Kirsten Bokenkamp of the ACLU told the San Antonio Express-News earlier this year that her organization was expecting to challenge the board’s decision this to roll out the tracking system, but the school has since gone ahead anyway. Steve Hernandez tells WND that he approached the ACLU for possible representation in his daughter’s case, but Rebecca Robertson of a local branch of the organization said, the ACLU of Texas will not be able to represent you or your daughter in this matter,” saying his daughter’s case in particular fails to meet the criteria they use to pick and choose civil liberties cases to take on.

Ah, nice to see the ACLU coming to the aid of a Christian, NOT! Just a matter of time before these RFID chips move from the school to your home and work.
 

naturallysweet

Has No Life - Lives on TB
If you send your children to a mega school, then this is what you get. There are almost a thousand children in each school, try to keep track of that many wanna be gangsters.

Either find a charter school, a private school, or home school if you want your children treated like human beings instead of factory cogs.
 

Kayso

Inactive
Since this is happening where I live I can say there is a VERY active protest going on against this RFID crap. The local We are change group is constantly protesting, petitioning etc. The school district of course doesn't care. They just do whatever they want to do like bureaucrats everywhere these days.
 

Tuttle

Contributing Member
I keep wanting to root for Texas in case of the Union's dissolution, but every time I get close to it, some state officiate always comes along to put the head of some God-given right on a pike in a way that even Californians would blanch at. (Usually just because the officiate has an R after their name, but you know.)
 

NoName

Veteran Member
I keep wanting to root for Texas in case of the Union's dissolution, but every time I get close to it, some state officiate always comes along to put the head of some God-given right on a pike in a way that even Californians would blanch at. (Usually just because the officiate has an R after their name, but you know.)

Follow the story, you'll find it wasn't anyone "with a R after their name" but the communist radicals in charge of our school district, that was the major proponent and oppressor. Texas can be a scary place for some folks, most of us have to have a little extra room in the crouch of our Levi's, even our women (maybe even more so) are a force to be reckoned with and aren't for the likes of a "normal" man (especially those without a R behind their name) to mess with. Probably better to be the safe, smart person you are and forget about Texas...they can take care of themselves, you don't need to cheer.

https://www.rutherford.org/publicat...ool_officials_end_rfid_tracking_program_citin

Victory: San Antonio Public School Officials End RFID Tracking Program, Citing Civil Liberties Lawsuit, Negative Publicity, Low Participation Rates

July 16, 2013

SAN ANTONIO, Texas — After a drawn-out battle waged in court and within the community, school officials with the Northside Independent School District have announced their decision to stop using a student tracking program that relied on RFID tracking badges containing tiny chips that produce a radio signal, enabling school officials to track students’ location on school property. According to school officials, the decision to cease the “Student Locator Project” was due in part to low participation rates, negative publicity, and a lawsuit by The Rutherford Institute. Rutherford Institute attorneys had filed suit against school officials in November 2012 on behalf of Andrea Hernandez, a sophomore at John Jay High School’s Science and Engineering Academy, who was expelled from the magnet school in January 2013 after objecting to the badges based on religious freedom and privacy concerns. The question of whether Hernandez will be permitted to return to John Jay has yet to be resolved.

“This decision by Texas school officials to end the student locator program is proof that change is possible if Americans care enough to take a stand and make their discontent heard,” said constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute and author of A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State. “As Andrea Hernandez and her family showed, the best way to ensure that your government officials hear you is by never giving up, never backing down, and never remaining silent—even when things seem hopeless.”

In 2012, the Northside Independent School District in San Antonio, Texas, launched a program, the “Student Locator Project,” aimed ostensibly at increasing public funding for the district by increasing student attendance rates. As part of the pilot program, roughly 4,200 students at Jay High School and Jones Middle School were required to wear “SmartID” card badges embedded with an RFID tracking chip which made it possible for school officials to track students’ whereabouts on campus at all times. School officials hoped to expand the program to the district’s 112 schools. For 15-year-old Andrea Hernandez, a Christian, the badges pose a significant religious freedom concern in addition to the obvious privacy issues. In response to her requests to opt out of the program and use chipless badges, Hernandez was informed that “there will be consequences for refusal to wear an ID card.” For example, students who refused to take part in the ID program were not able to access essential services like the cafeteria and library, nor would they be able to purchase tickets to extracurricular activities. According to Hernandez, teachers were even requiring students to wear the IDs to use the bathroom.

In coming to Andrea’s defense, Rutherford Institute attorneys alleged that the school’s attempts to penalize, discriminate and retaliate against Andrea violated her rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Although a district court judge for Bexar County, Texas, granted The Rutherford Institute’s request for a temporary restraining order to prevent NISD from expelling Hernandez based on her objections to the tracking badge, both the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and the Western District of Texas denied her accommodation, with the Western District judge ruling against the sophomore on the grounds that her objections were “not grounded in her religious beliefs” and were a “secular choice rather than a religious concern.” As constitutional attorney Whitehead pointed out, the ruling not only was “a sad statement on our nation’s growing intolerance for dissent and for those whose religious beliefs may differ from the mainstream” but it sent a clear message that it’s more important for the schools to make money than for individual freedoms to be respected.

Affiliate attorneys Jerri Lynn Ward, a private practitioner, and Anand Agneshwar and Anna Thompson of Arnold & Porter assisted The Rutherford Institute with Andrea’s defense.

CASE HISTORY
01/18/2013 • School Officials Reject Request for Accommodation, Kick Andrea Hernandez Out of Magnet School Over Religious Objections to RFID Tracking Program

01/18/2013 • Andrea Hernandez Stands Firm, Asks School Officials to Respect Her Religious Objections to RFID Tracking Program, Let Her Use Old Badge & Stay in School

01/17/2013 • Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals Denies Injunction Prohibiting Texas School Officials from Expelling Student Over Objections to RFID Tracking Badge

01/11/2013 • Rutherford Institute Asks Fifth Circuit for Injunction Prohibiting School Officials from Expelling Student Over Objections to RFID Tracking Badge

01/10/2013 • Rutherford Institute Files Appeal Challenging Federal Court's Ruling in the Case of a Texas Student Expelled Over Objections to RFID Tracking Badge

01/08/2013 • Dismissing Religious Belief Concerns, Federal Court Rules in Favor of Texas School's Expulsion of Andrea Hernandez Over Objections to RFID Tracking Badge

01/03/2013 • Rutherford Institute Calls on Court to Reject Texas School's Motion to Dismiss Case of Texas Student Expelled for Refusing to Wear an RFID Tracking Badge

12/14/2012 • Federal Court to Hear Case of Texas High School Student Expelled for Refusing to Wear RFID Tracking Badge Due to Religious Objections, Privacy Concern

11/30/2012 • Rutherford Institute Asks Federal Court to Prohibit Texas School from Expelling Student with Religious Objections to RFID Tracking Badge

11/27/2012 • Sidestepping State Court Hearing, School Officials File for Removal to Federal Court in Case of High Schooler Forced to Wear "Smart ID" Tracking Badge

11/27/2012 • Texas Court to Hear Arguments for Preliminary Injunction Against High School in Case of Student Forced to Wear "Smart ID" Tracking Badge

11/21/2012 • Victory: Court Grants Rutherford Institute Request to Stop Texas School from Kicking Student Out for Refusing to Wear "Smart ID" Tracking Badge

11/20/2012 • Texas School Kicks Student Out of Magnet Program for Refusing to Wear "Smart ID" Tracking Badge—Rutherford Institute to Seek Prelim. Injunction

11/14/2012 • Rutherford Institute Warns Texas School Officials Not to Force Students to Wear RFID Tracking Devices, Despite Parental Concerns & Religious Rights

LEGAL ACTION

Click here to read The Rutherford Institute’s motion for injunction pending appeal in Hernandez v. Northside Indep. Sch. Distr.

Click here to read The U.S. District Court’s ruling in Hernandez v. Northside Indep. Sch. Distr.

Click here to read The Rutherford Institute's motion for a preliminary injunction in Hernandez v. Northside Independent Sch. Dist.

Click here to read The Rutherford Institute's petition in Hernandez v. Northside Independent School District.

Click here to read The Rutherford Institute's letter to the Northside Independent School District superintendent.

PRESS CONTACT
Nisha Whitehead
(434) 978-3888 ext. 604
 
Does anybody here KNOW the range of these chips? My thoughts is they have no battery and are briefly powered by the reader sending a signal that powers the chip enough to send a short range signal containing a little bit of data, such as the chip's ID number.
I don't think they can be tracked from yards away, like the middle of the playground or on the street, all they could do is report you entered the library, and have not left it yet. Tracking by satellite or from roving vehicles, no way. Truancy, they can't tell you're at home or running around the city, only that you haven't come to school. Roll call does that.
A student could come to school, then foil bag the chip and leave, come back, then take it out of the bag and walk out of wherever she should have been.
 

IceWave

Veteran Member
I wonder what the school and.or district would do if the students took the cards, but carried them in RFID blocking sleeves?
 

Buick Electra

TB2K Girls with Guns
Okay, this is paying havoc with my eyes. Here ya go.... (Paragraph breaks are your friends)

http://rt.com/usa/news/texas-school-id-hernandez-033/

A school district in Texas came under fire earlier this year when it announced that it would require students to wear microchip-embedded ID cards at all times. Now students who refuse to be monitored say they are feeling the repercussions.

Since October 1, students at John Jay High School and Anson Jones Middle School in San Antonia, Texas have been asked to attend class clasping onto photo ID cards equipped with radio-frequency identification chips to keep track of each and every pupil’s personal location.

Educators insist that the endeavor is being rolled out in Texas to relax the rampant truancy rates devastating the state’s school and the subsequent funding they are failing to receive as a result, and pending the program’s success the RFID chips could soon come to 112 schools in all and affect nearly 100,000 students.

Some pupils say they are already seeing the impact, though, and it’s not one they are very anxious to experience. Students who refuse to walk the schoolhouse halls with a location-sensitive sensor in their pocket or around their neck are being tormented by instructors and being barred from participating in certain school-wide functions, with some saying they are even being turned away from common areas like cafeterias and libraries.

Andrea Hernandez, a sophomore at John Jay, says educators have ignored her pleas to have her privacy respected and have told her she can’t participate in school elections if she doesn’t submit to the tracking program.

To Salon, Hernandez says subjecting herself to constant monitoring by way of wearing a RFID chip is comparable to clothing herself in the “mark of the beast.” When she reached out to WND.com to reveal the school’s response, though, she told them that she was threatened with exclusion from picking a homecoming king and queen for not adhering to the rules.

"I had a teacher tell me I would not be allowed to vote because I did not have the proper voter ID," Hernandez told WND. "I had my old student ID card which they originally told us would be good for the entire four years we were in school. He said I needed the new ID with the chip in order to vote."

Even after Hernandez politely refused to wear an RFID chip, Deputy Superintendent Ray Galindo offered a statement that suggests that both the student’s religious and civil liberty-anchored arguments will only allow her some leeway for so long.

“We are simply asking your daughter to wear an ID badge as every other student and adult on the Jay campus is asked to do,” Galindo wrote to the girl’s parents, WND reports. If she is allowed to forego the tracking now, he continued, it could only be a matter of time before the school signs off on making location-monitoring mandatory and the repercussions will be more than just revoking voting rights for homecoming contests.

“I urge you to accept this solution so that your child’s instructional program will not be affected. As we discussed, there will be consequences for refusal to wear an ID card as we begin to move forward with full implementation,” Galindo continued.
The girl’s father, Steve Hernandez, tells WND that the school has been somewhat willing to work with the daughter’s demands, but insists that her family “would have to agree to stop criticizing the program” and start publically supporting it.

“I told him that was unacceptable because it would imply an endorsement of the district’s policy and my daughter and I should not have to give up our constitutional rights to speak out against a program that we feel is wrong,” Mr. Hernandez responded.

By reversing the poor attendance figures, the Northside Independent School District is expected to collect upwards of $2 million in state funding, with the program itself costing around one-quarter of that to roll out and another $136,005 annually to keep it up and running. The savings the school stands to make in the long run won’t necessarily negate the other damages that could arise: Heather Fazio, of Texans for Accountable Government tells WND that for $30 she filed a Freedom of Information Act request and received the names and addresses of every student in the school district.

“Using this information along with an RFID reader means a predator could use this information to determine if the student is at home and then track them wherever they go. These chips are always broadcasting so anyone with a reader can track them anywhere,” she says.

Kirsten Bokenkamp of the ACLU told the San Antonio Express-News earlier this year that her organization was expecting to challenge the board’s decision this to roll out the tracking system, but the school has since gone ahead anyway. Steve Hernandez tells WND that he approached the ACLU for possible representation in his daughter’s case, but Rebecca Robertson of a local branch of the organization said, the ACLU of Texas will not be able to represent you or your daughter in this matter,” saying his daughter’s case in particular fails to meet the criteria they use to pick and choose civil liberties cases to take on.

Ah, nice to see the ACLU coming to the aid of a Christian, NOT! Just a matter of time before these RFID chips move from the school to your home and work.
 

Buick Electra

TB2K Girls with Guns
San Antonio is a liberal haven. They should apply the same rules to VOTER ID.....

“We are simply asking all voters to have a voting ID in the form of a drivers license or state ID card, as every other voter is asked to do,”
 

IronMan 2

Senior Member
1. Accept the new ID with the chip and smile as it's handed over to you.
2. Microwave for 20 seconds.
3. Problem solved.
 

Snyper

Veteran Member
1. Accept the new ID with the chip and smile as it's handed over to you.
2. Microwave for 20 seconds.
3. Problem solved.

That won't solve anything since a card that doesn't function is just like having no card at all.
 
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