Schools Spend Millions on Surveillance Technology to Combat Teen Vaping Epidemic
“When activated by a vaping sensor, those cameras can capture every student leaving the bathroom.”
Remember the days when the bad kids would smoke in school bathrooms? It’s a whole new world.
FOX News reports:
US schools invest millions in surveillance technology to combat teen vaping epidemic
When Aaliyah Iglesias was caught vaping at a Texas high school, she didn’t realize how much could be taken from her.
Suddenly, the rest of her high school experience was threatened: being student council president, her role as debate team captain and walking at graduation. Even her college scholarships were at risk. She was sent to the district’s alternative school for 30 days and told she could have faced criminal charges.
Like thousands of other students around the country, she was caught by surveillance equipment that schools have installed to crack down on electronic cigarettes, often without informing students.
Schools nationwide have invested millions of dollars in the monitoring technology, including federal COVID-19 emergency relief money meant to help schools through the pandemic and aid students’ academic recovery. Marketing materials have noted the sensors, at a cost of over $1,000 each, could help fight the virus by checking air quality.
E-cigarettes have inundated middle and high schools. The devices can dispense vapor containing higher concentrations of nicotine than tobacco cigarettes. Millions of minors report vaping despite efforts to limit sales to kids by raising the legal age to 21 and ban flavored products preferred by teenagers.
Some districts pair the sensors with surveillance cameras. When activated by a vaping sensor, those cameras can capture every student leaving the bathroom.
It can surprise students that schools even have such technology. Iglesias, who graduated in May from Tyler High School in Tyler, Texas, first learned it had sensors after an administrator came into a restroom as students started vaping.
“I was in awe,” Iglesias said. The administrator tried to figure out who was involved but ultimately let all the students go.
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Comments
Incredibly fiscally inefficient/irresponsible and nanny state method of addressing this.
This is not about “health.”
Control freaks — psychopaths — live for the ability to control the lives of others.
Homeschool your kids
I guess it’s better they spend money on that, than on convincing the kids they’re transgender.
Still, they complain endlessly that they just don’t have enough money. Then they spend it on this?
“In this school, pollution is only for your minds, not your lungs!”
Seriously, vaping is the biggest thing they have to worry about?
Not… I don’t know… ethics?
“[schools spent] federal COVID-19 emergency relief money meant to help schools through the pandemic and aid students’ academic recovery [on] the sensors, at a cost of over $1,000 each, [which they said] could help fight the virus by checking air quality.”
Not to be left out, the school nurse started expensing a case of MD 20/20 weekly, “strictly for medicinal purposes.”
The surveillance state continues to grow. Yet, no lawyer, judge, or lawgiver is hanged for supporting it.
ARE THEY SERIOUS? They will spend that kind of money on curbing VAPING but refuse to harden schools to prevent active shooters? Too bad Johnny died from multiple gunshot wounds given to him by a classmate but at least his lungs are in perfect health!
Another way to describe “hardening schools to prevent active shooters” is “turning schools into prisons in an attempt to prevent less than 1% of the murders of school age children.”
But that’s not why leftist school administrators and teachers oppose hardening schools. They seem to be just fine becoming prison wardens in other ways, so there must be some other reason they don’t want to stop school shootings…