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School administrators to monitor students with new body cameras

As kids around the nation head back to school in the days ahead, some school districts are taking the lead of local police departments and outfitting their school administrators with small body cameras.

The hope with these cameras it to be able to capture both good behavior and bad behavior from both the students and administrators.

Burlington Community School District in southeastern Iowa is taking the unusual step of recording parent and student interactions with administrators — a move district officials say will protect both sides. (DesMoines Register)

A school district in southeastern Iowa “is thought to be among the first in the nation to outfit administrators at each of the district's eight school buildings with a body camera,” the Des Moines Register reports.

“The district spent about $1,100 to purchase 13 cameras at about $85 each. They record with a date and time stamp, can be clipped onto ties or lanyards, and can be turned on and off as needed.”

For now, they won’t be used to record all interactions with adults––only school administrators will use them, and probably not all the time.

But once in place, there could be a temptation to record everything just in case something happens. (TheAtlantic)

The Superintendent Pat Coen told the newspaper that he saw the value in wearable recording devices while deployed in Afghanistan with the Iowa Army National Guard, while another administrator in the school district first urged use of the technology:

But at least one safety expert calls the move troubling. Ken Trump of the National School Safety and Security Services called it a "substantial overreach" by school leaders, one he wouldn't want to see replicated in other districts. "They're not in the dark alleys of local streets on the midnight shift," said Trump, president of the Ohio-based consulting firm. "They're in school with children." (DesMoines Register)

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