Beware School Districts Bearing Gifts
19 Nov 2011 Leave a Comment
in Culture, Education, Politics and Parenting, Uncategorized Tags: chat, children's constitutional rights, due process, email, evidence, kids, parenting, parenting rights, school district
Recently I received an email from my sons’ school telling me that the school district was going to give every middle and high school student their very own email account. The email read:
“In addition to streamlined communication between teachers and students, here are additional motivations for the District email initiative:
·Safe electronic communication system with protective internet filters.
·More effective enforcement of SVVSD Responsible Use Policy.
·Student access to digital communication tools, including instant messaging, real time document collaboration.
·Parent/Guardian access to their student s (sic) email account upon request.
Additional information about this email initiative is available on the District website where you can also access District policies concerning student Internet use. Parents and guardians who wish to exclude their student from this initiative are asked to complete the attached opt-out form and return it to your student s (sic) school by December 2nd.”
How nice, I thought.
Reading the Fine Print
But then, I wondered why would the district give children have a new email account when they know that most kids already have them? What’s in it for them? Safe internet access with protective filters. Great. More effective enforcement of the SVVSD Responsible Use Policy. Huh? What’s that? And why would the district give parents an opportunity to opt out? If it’s such a nice thing, they wouldn’t need to offer an opt-out, right?
NOTE: You can click the District’s link above to see the landing page which contains a link to the “Responsible Use Policy” page. That link takes you here: http://www.stvrain.k12.co.us/policies/E/EHC-E-2.pdf
On the last page of that policy was a statement that made the district’s new initiative make a lot more sense, “That the things that I do using a school computer or network are not private and that my teachers and District staff may review my work and activities at any time.”
According to this policy, to which all students must agree or be barred from use, the district will have access all content of children’s email accounts—including their chats. Legally, that means that there is no privacy between the children and the school district, staff, and teachers. Anything children write in email or type into a chat, no matter when it’s written, at home or at school, no matter what it pertains to, personal or school-related, can be used as a statement against interest, criminally and civilly.
Did You Say Criminally?
Yes! But the district’s policy doesn’t say that. It only says that if a student misuses school-owned technology that they’re at risk of suspension or expulsion. The district’s policy statement doesn’t say that kids could be prosecuted criminally or sued civilly, and that the content of their email can be used against them in court, with many of the due process protections of the Constitution waived by parents, inadvertently, by an act of omission—not opting out.
A quick background on children’s due process rights and the 4th amendment freedom from unreasonable search and seizure: kids don’t have the extensive protections against unreasonable searches that adults have. In fact, school officials need only a reasonable suspicion that a child is up to no good in order to search a locker or personal belongings. And a reasonable suspicion can be established by almost anything, and is quite a bit lower of a standard than the “probable cause” standard that applies to adults. Once a child is searched, any evidence found may be provided to police to prosecute the child in either a delinquency court or possibly in an adult criminal court. That makes sense. School officials need to do everything in their power to prevent violence and crime on school grounds and they should be able to search kids’ locker.
However, school-hosted email accounts are less private even than a kid’s locker, which is about as private as the trash left on your curb. The district’s stated goal is to better enforce the responsible use policy. It will not be long before the district discovers something in an email and hands it over to authorities as evidence against a child. The district needs no one’s permission to do that, has no obligation to consult with parents. The requirement for a reasonable suspicion has been waived along with the child’s right to be free of unreasonable searches.
Inadvertent Waiver
When we allow our children to email or chat on an unsecure, non-private email account for which we have unwittingly waived what few Constitutional rights they have, we put our children one dangerous step closer to “game over”. That is because the district’s opt-out policy skirts the prohibition against unreasonable searches in the 4th Amendment and 5th Amendment right to due process by obtaining parental consent to a search in advance.
Combined with the Zero Tolerance policy, the school district has an obligation to report and punish children for writing that is even remotely incriminating. Parents are waiving the regular rules of due process and evidence, which protect all of our rights, without even knowing that they’re making it easier for schools, police, and the DA to make a case against a child than the same would be against an adult.
That means that if we don’t opt out, we are handing our children over to schools and police, giving them power that extends far beyond the schoolhouse doors, into their personal lives outside of school, heretofore the province of parents alone. We give up our superior position as parents and abdicate our responsibility to discipline and guide our children—to the government—24/7. It also means that one little slip, and our child’s future could be over, and it is our own hand that will deliver them.
Picture this: Seventh grader who’s very expressive says something a little over the top to another student on a chat—as they’re wont to do. Teacher, who has a bone to pick with student, reads the chat thread and sees that little something. Teacher hands the transcript over to the principal, who may give that information to the Community Service Officer, who files a police report of harassment against the child. Never mind that the other child may not have even been phased by the communication, or perhaps even welcomed it.
The police have probable cause and evidence against the child. Child is arrested, released on bail, tried and the evidence admitted because the parent gave the district permission to invade the account in the first place. Remember that even one conviction can irreparably damage their school career as well as their prospects for college.
Without this email account, the school district, police, and DA have to go through the normal methods of building a case. They have to take statements, go through discovery, and subpoena the email or chat records to get that piece of evidence admitted—and defend motions to exclude evidence (motions in limine). With this ostensibly “public” email account, they can sidestep many of these due process procedures because of the parent’s waiver of their children’s access to constitutional protections.
You May Want to Waive Your Children’s Constitutional Rights
In all fairness, some parents may want their kids to participate in school-hosted and -regulated email, with the full understanding that they are waiving their children’s already limited freedom from unreasonable searches. Some parents know their kids are misbehaving and wish desperately for intervention from authorities. For those parents, by all means, do so. Just know what you’re doing consciously.
An anonymous member of the district told me yesterday that they don’t believe the district has any mal-intent in providing these email accounts and that they trust the district to not use email accounts against kids thought there are no assurances of that nor disclosure of the risks to children of criminal and civil liability in any of the district’s materials. Also the district member said, “behavior is always an issue in schools”. I agree. And I agree that the kids who are bullying, misbehaving, or worse should have to face the consequences of their actions. But I am not willing to hand my children over to the district or police if they make an error in judgment, which they will, that could easily be misunderstood or blown out of proportion, without the protections of the Constitution I have sworn to uphold and defend.
As a parent, I want my children to be afforded every protection the Constitution gives them, even if they make a bad choice. Especially if they make a bad choice. I will not waive their right to make a mistake and to recover from it. I may not bail them out of jail, but I won’t deliver them in handcuffs either—at least not by mistake anyway. And I’m not willing to leave it up to the goodness of the hearts of school officials to decide whether to prosecute my child or not. Because you know that the first time an incriminating email or chat comes up, the district is going to throw the book at the kid with all the firepower it’s got to make an example of him or her.
The district has an obligation to spell out exactly what the risks are so parents can decide based on proper disclosure. Every parent should make this decision with full understanding of what they’re doing. If you allow your child to utilize the school district’s email system, at this time, anything they say can and will be used against them in a court of law.
You be the parent. Keep control over your children and their online lives. Monitor them, teach them what is appropriate internet behavior. But don’t let the schools do it for you. Here’s the Opt-Out form:
A Short(track) Story
18 Jun 2010 Leave a Comment
I got some new information this last Wednesday about myself that I’d like to share.
Apparently, I suck monkey balls.
I overheard this insightful observation at the CU Short Track race in Boulder by a young whippersnapper in a bright yellow and black CU skinsuit who was none too happy that I had the nerve to take a digger right in front of her when I tried to give her space to pass me on a super steep, rutted hairpin turn on the track. Poor girl had to get off her bike and walk it up the final five feet of hill, thereby ruining her overall time. Never mind that she still came in first in the Women’s B race.
After I heard this remark, and having actually wiped out twice, unsure if my kneecap was still intact, I felt a big lump in my throat and slipped away to the car to catch my breath and my composure. My head was retorting and snapping back at her in defense of my 43-year-old ego that was unsure of itself going into this race which is akin to roller derby on 26-inch wheels and a track that changes every week.
I almost cried. My lower lip quivering.
But I was still a little proud that I could get my butt out on that track and try it. At my age. I was not phased by the fact that the junior boys caught up to me, those kids are on steroids, they’re so fast. At least I didn’t get passed by the junior girls. Phew. But a few of the other women lapped me in the last two laps.
Toward the end of the race, one young boy was having a bit harder time than I. When I caught up to him, he looked at me as he dragged his bike up a hill, “This sucks,” he said. “First time?” I asked. “Yep,” he swung his leg up over and got back on. “Let’s go,” I said and we took off for the final lap together. We both finished. Way in the back. But we finished dammit.
That night, when I told the story of the CU girl who’d complained to the race organizers that “That bitch sucks monkey balls,” Timothy took offense, “I am not a monkey.”
It Ain’t All Fun & Games
29 Apr 2010 1 Comment
But sometimes, it is.
A boy-child roaming around the neighborhood loaded BB gun in hand. A innocent shove that breaks an elbow; a scuffle and a scratch that leaves little pink tracks of flaked skin; a father leaning over a child’s addition drama, a mother hustling to make dinner for 12, another rushing out the door to work. One boy trying to negotiate for more video game time. Another one cuts the head off a garter snake.
Timothy and I fall into bed, exhausted.
Complexity is our norm now that we are living in community. There are so many people to consider, each with their own view of the world, their own journeys to take, their own expectations met or unmet. Conflict could be the norm. But it’s not. Complexity is.
The other day, one of the boys had been given the okay to use his BB gun, at the request of a neighbor who wanted some help chasing off fuzzy little bunnies nibbling his newly planted lettuces. No one asked me about it. After all, it wasn’t my child. But the boy went farther afield, walking around the cul de sac, yellow sunglasses covering mischief-seeking eyes. I didn’t think much of it. After all, it wasn’t my child.
Todd, dear sweet Todd, had his eye shot out with a BB gun at a young age. By his brother. I’ve known that for a long time. When you meet Todd, you almost have to ask about the small black dot in his clear blue eyes and why it wanders slightly to the outside. Still, it didn’t dawn on me that the child walking around BB gun in hand might present a problem. Not until I saw Todd in his kitchen did I remember—really consider—what he thought of the BB gun. Because guns, any gun, makes Todd shake.
Suddenly, I recognized that I was not happy about the BB gun in a small neighborhood filled with little kids. I had to set a limit, if not for my own very real objection to guns of all kinds, then for Todd. So I talked to the child’s parent about it, which could have gone horribly wrong, or ended in an argument or coldness. But it didn’t. It ended in a loving agreement that children will not walk around unattended with BB guns in the neighborhood.
Because we care about one another.
It ain’t all fun and games, no it isn’t. But it is worthwhile.
Who is a Legitimate Mother: Part III. “He who has the gold, makes the rules.”
20 Mar 2010 Leave a Comment
in Politics and Parenting, Uncategorized Tags: breastfeeding, consciousness, Culture, feminism, Mothering, parenting, politics
Women accept diminished value in part because we are in an inferior bargaining position. The glass ceiling still looms. Men are at the highest levels of business, they decide who to pay what. And why would a company pay a woman as much as a man when they know darned well they can get the same (or better) labor for less? Ironically, companies often support unequal pay by declaring that men have families to support, ignoring the fact that many households are headed exclusively, or primarily, by women.
Of course they pay women less! If industry paid us comparable wages, we might be able to support our families and undermine the economic superiority of those in power. This is not to say that men do this on purpose but that our social structure encourages it on a subconscious or semi-conscious level. In response, in the 70s, second-wave feminism developed consciousness-raising groups, a watered down version of which exists in diversity and corporate sexual harassment training today.
The beauty is in the details.
American society has a pressing interest in maintaining the constructs that decide who is a legitimate mother (read a legitimate woman), and who is not. Social conservatives often bemoan the loss of the traditional family unit (which, by the way, is a local structure that doesn’t precisely apply in every society). The traditional American family unit is a male head-of-household model with wife and children following at his heels. Rarely do such households include more than two generations, parents and children, or more than one family unit as in communal living.
Who does this structure serve? And how does this impact our children? And why does it matter?
It matters because understanding the structures in which we operate is critical to ensuring that our children grow and prosper. It matters because for too long families have lived in isolationist, hierarchical fashion, with the man as king of the castle with privacy as the supreme law. What happens behind the closed doors of the home, stays behind closed doors. No one, save the government and only when there is clear evidence of a crime, may peer into the inner workings of the family unit. It matters because so long as we are silent about our families, we are powerless in the world. It matters because as the mother goes, so goes the child.
We know this through the many studies that show a correlation between maternal health and infant health as well as economic indicators that tie women’s poverty to children’s poverty. Children of mothers who are de-legitimated (because of marital status, poverty, education, or mere gender) endure the social sufferings of their mothers. Thus, the child of a single woman of color is less likely to be honored, educated, and raised to his or her full potential than is the child of a white married woman. This child is far more likely to receive all the benefits and protections society can offer while other children are less valued and less supported. What happens to these castaway kids?
We know the answer intuitively, as well as objectively. These children are the have-nots of the world; they are the ones most likely (though by no means guaranteed) to lose heart, to be abused, to drop out, to become abusers, to be incarcerated, to be put in foster care, to have their parents’ rights terminated. In short, by ignoring the pressures on the mother, we perpetuate the ills of the child and thus the ills of society and the world. American society aims the energy of its wrath at the mother and her “badness” for having had a child and failing to live up to a social expectation; rather than question the origin and legitimacy of this expectation, or directing its energy to promote the well-being that mother/child pair.
Society goes as the children go. We only harm ourselves and our children’s future by not being fully aware of the structures that determine our roles, rules, and outcomes. Our children will grow to repeat them, often in unhealthy ways. Our daughters will be consigned to smaller lives than they are capable of and will stretch out against those constrictions in ways that don’t serve them. Our sons will be deprived of female partnership in all its powerful aspects; feminine wisdom, intuition, multi-tasking, cooperation, nurturance, health and healing, endurance to name but a few. Our men will continue to be separated from the feminine, a lonely place to be for sure. Our society will continue to fail to fulfill the promise of the founding fathers and mothers, and to be embroiled in unbalanced global resource conflict (but more about that in another post). Our children will have to deal with the crippling effects of social isolation, intolerance, dissociation, and economic inequality.
Ultimately, both men and women are responsible for the world our children receive. At the very least, we should understand it and be able to describe the visible and invisible forces at play so our children can understand what they’re inheriting.
The next time you see a mother and experience a judgment about her, think deeply about the social constructs in your mind that give that judgment energy. Ask whether the judgment is legitimate, rather than whether she is legitimate.
What do you think?
Next up, more about how women can shape our experience through consciously building our life structures!
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to the presenters at the first Motherhood Conference (sponsored by DU, University of Dublin and Whittier law schools) for their insight into the history of motherhood and tireless work in feminism–of which I have been woefully ignorant for too long–Rickie Sollinger, Kris Miccio, Penelope Bryan to name just three. Deep gratitude to my law school professors who have rounded out my understanding of the world, and sometimes left me picking my jaw up off the floor; Penelope Bryan, Rebecca Aviel, Jan Laitos, Nancy Ehrenreich, Catherine Smith; and to my sisters who have gone before me: Linda, Kathy, Mary, Anne, and Mimi.
Priorities
08 Jan 2010 Leave a Comment
The bar exam looms just 48 days away. I need to memorize (or re-memorize) thousands of bits of data but find myself distracted by the little steps toward my true life’s work like this one that I let myself take in the few moments between lectures.
After February 24th, this blog will become a place to talk about being an on-purpose parent. An on-purpose parent consciously choses to parent their children in a way that leads them toward lives of greatness, creativity, joy, and full engagement with the world around them. This blog will publish articles and commentary on the legal aspects of parenting off-the-grid as well as parenting as a spiritual journey. I will tell you my story. And I invite you to tell yours.
These are my children…
08 Jan 2010 Leave a Comment
And the reason for (most) everything I dream, desire, hope for, and work toward. The stories I’ll tell about our lives will be riotously funny, sad, informative, and searching. But I will try to tell the truth, even when it’s–ahem–embarrassing.
The first thing I’d like to define at the outset is what parenting off-the-grid means and what an on-purpose parent is and is not. First, when I refer to on-purpose parenting, I mean making parenting decisions for and and often with our children that helps them along the path to an awake, aware, contributing life on the planet. I DON’T mean parents who have made the decision to have a baby then do so. Any parent, no matter how they come into being a parent, is capable of be either an on-purpose parent or an unconscious parent or anything in between at any given moment. The idea of being an on-purpose parent is that we commit to being aware and awake ourselves, choosing courses of action as a parent with information, training, and assistance. Most importantly, it means that we allow ourselves the options of looking beyond the mainstream for answers to our parenting tasks. And that leads us off-the-grid.
Parents who make conscious decisions concerning their children frequently do not find their path in the mainstream. From birth to emancipation, on-purpose parents question the status quo and want more complete answers than our parents before us had available to them. Sometimes a mainstream answer to a parenting issue will suffice just fine. But an on-purpose parent will not take that as gospel truth just because society says so. An on-purpose parent has to know for themselves, feels compelled to ask the questions and explore different methods.
But when parents are off-the-grid, we’re also in some uncharted territory legally, psychologically, physically, developmentally, emotionally, and intellectually. This blog is a forum in which we can find our way for the good of our children, together.
