Big Brother Comes to Emery Unified

Is Your Child's Biometric Data Safe?

Opinion

The Tattler has learned that dozens of Anna Yates Elementary students were rounded up today by school officials and fingerprinted in order to have their biometric data stored in a government database. What crimes were these nine year olds convicted of? accused of? suspected of?  None.  Instead, this is the price our children must pay for access to Emery Unified's School Lunch Pogrom Program.

Emery knows what
its doing, right?
What could possibly
go wrong?

The new system was "announced" to some parents via a letter sent home during the last week of school last school year, in June of 2014.  Parents that are new to the District this year may not have heard anything about this program or been given any advance notice of the District's intentions (one Anna Yates parent told us he did not receive the letter at the end of last year either and only learned of the letter from other parents).

Parents have the ability to "opt out" of the biometric scanning of their children, but must request the opt out form from the District.

Parents nationwide have objected to similar programs, some bringing lawsuits to prevent the practice, and the ACLU has often gotten involved. The concerns expressed include:

• Given the prevalence these days of data breaches, what guarantees do we have that our children's biometric data will not fall into the hands of malicious third parties?
• What sort of message does it send to our children when we tell them that they have to submit to a government-initiated data collection procedure about their own unique biological markers?
• Doesn't the entire procedure of fingerprinting, especially in a largely minority school District, evoke images of assumed criminality that our District has pledged to oppose and prevent?
• How much money is the District spending on this technology parents don't want when the District is not spending money on other technologies that would actually assist in student learning?
• Were less intrusive alternatives considered? Student ID cards? Anonymous value cards?
• What happens when a student leaves the District? What guarantees do we have that the stored biometric data will be destroyed?
• Why weren't parents given much more explicit notification about this?
• Districts and companies that produce the biometric technologies often argue that "fingerprints" per se are not stored by their systems, merely unique points within the fingerprint represented digitally.  These responses seem to ignore that a unique identifier is a unique identifier.  If the system works at all, then it contains personal, private, biological data about our children.  Data that should not be collected or stored without much more explicit notification.  Data that the District should never have proposed to gather to begin with.

State: New $60 Million School Will Be Sub-Standard

Sacramento Says:

New Emeryville School Doesn't Meet State Mandated Minimum Standards

Emeryville Parent Challenges Planning Commission

Emeryville parent Brian Carver has alerted the  Planning Commission, scheduled to vote tonight on the final schematic design of the new school planned as part of the Center of Community Life; the facilities do not meet California minimum space standards for children.  Additionally, Mr Carver asks the Planning Commission to consider the fact that the School District has engaged in an end run around citizen engagement and disallowed the people of Emeryville to help decide if the Anna Yates Elementary School should be closed and moved to the new high school site.   Lastly, the District has not committed on telling the people of Emeryville what is to become of the newly abandoned school properties as it moves forward with the contentious Emeryville Center of Community Life.

Here is Brian Carver's letter:

Dear members of the Planning Commission:

Thank you for service to our City.  I have followed the development of
the ECCL project very closely, and as a parent and active community
member I continue to have concerns about this project's design and cost.
Most importantly, I simply do not believe that this project provides
enough outdoor space for our children.  Even at Anna Yates, since the
recent change to move the 7th and 8th grades to that location, we do not
have enough space for kids to play (particularly in the morning, before
school).  We have had times at the school where the play structure is
"scheduled," meaning that only certain classes may use it for recess
that day.  My concern is that the drive for "efficiency" and shared use
will not solve this problem, but will be a very expensive replication of
it at the San Pablo site.

There are State guidelines that outline the amount of space necessary in
new schools.  While EUSD staff insists that no one meets these
standards, I do not believe that after many millions of dollars we
should be creating a project that shortchanges our kids and community on
space.  A new project should aim to do better, rather than to replicate
the failures of others.  We should also be looking at how much space
neighboring, successful public schools offer--these schools will be
competing with us--and if we do not have adequate space for outdoor
activities, learning, and programming, then enrollment will suffer,
potentially to the point that maintaining a School District in
Emeryville becomes fiscally unsustainable, all while leaving our
residents with decades of bond payments.

Finally, the Commission should condition any ECCL plan approval on firm
commitments from the District regarding the future uses of the Anna
Yates and Ralph Hawley sites.  Both Board Trustee Simon and
then-Superintendent Sugiyama promised the attendees of the July 2010
City-School Committee meeting, myself included, that residents would
have a voice in the decision to co-locate all the grades at one site.[1]
They assured voters that this opportunity was guaranteed by the
language of Measure J itself.  However, this summer, when over 70
individuals signed an open letter to the District urging the Trustees to
keep the elementary students at the Anna Yates site, the plea fell on
deaf ears.[2]  At this weekend's design meeting, Superintendent Lindo
told attendees that the co-location decision was made over a decade ago
and was not up for discussion.  This is not the community engagement
process that was promised in 2010 or in the language of Measure J
itself.  Since the District will not keep its promises to residents,
perhaps it will keep promises to the Planning Commission:  Ask them to
assure you that these public properties will not be sold off or rented
to a competing private or charter school.  Ask them to go on record as
to their plans for these sites' long-term use and maintenance as a
condition of any ECCL approval.  It should be part of their
responsibilities as Trustees to have long-term plans for the use and
maintenance of public properties, but residents have had no luck in
getting these Trustees to be transparent about such plans.  I hope you
can.  (Anticipating a rebuttal: A task force whose very charter directs
its members to conclude that the Anna Yates site should be used for
adult education is not a part of any transparent community engagement
process.)

Thank you. Please do what you can to ensure that our children have
adequate facilities for recreation and play to support their learning.

Sincerely,
Brian W. Carver
Emeryville resident and parent of a child at Anna Yates

[1]
http://emeryvilletattler.blogspot.com/2011/10/cityschool-district-bogus-co-location.html
[2]
https://www.change.org/petitions/emery-unified-school-district-do-not-close-anna-yates-elementary-school

City/School District Bogus "Co-Location" Narrative

Measure J "Co-Location" Controversy-

 Voters Kept In The Dark:

Anna Yates School To Be Abandoned All Along

A recently released recording of government officials at an Emeryville City/Schools meeting in 2010 has revealed a stark counter narrative to what the same officials are now lockstep claiming is immutable; namely that Emeryville's elementary school must be abandoned.  As these Emeryville officials at City Hall and at the School District heat up what they call "community engagement", the shopping around of the voter approved $400 million Center of Community Life school bond, they have presented to residents a consensus among themselves that the popular Anna Yates Elementary School must be abandoned and the children moved to the proposed new school on San Pablo Avenue.  The July 2010 recording however reveals that these same leaders planned a strategy before the November Measure J school bond vote where the public could be tricked into thinking that there could be a real public debate about the fate of Anna Yates school if they were to vote for  Measure J. 

The Walking Dead: Anna Yates School  

Anna Yates Elementary School:
Taxpayers just last year spent
$9 million  to upgrade the facilities.

The one K-12 school idea, or "co-location" is now a fait accompli; locked in, if the politicians are to be believed, but before the citizens school bond November 2010 vote, they told voters that a YES vote on the bond would not mean that co-location is a sure thing.  Anna Yates school could remain open even if Measure J passed, they assured voters; its fate would be decided by the community in the "design phase" after passage of the Measure.  

Even though School Board member Josh Simon now parrots the narrative of his colleagues that co-location is necessary, at the 2010 meeting he joined his colleagues in the idea of allowing Anna Yates to continue on as an elementary school by stating, "Frankly, whether that safe quality education is in one site or several sites, we'll still be looking at that in the design phase, but it's going to cost $95 million [before financing and not including city money] regardless of how many sites."  Later in the meeting, a disturbing duplicity was revealed by the council members and school board members attending the meeting as they openly discussed how voters could be deceived by the Measure J bond language to hide their real motivations; to abandon Anna Yates Elementary School and force co-location of both Emeryville schools onto one San Pablo Avenue site; their real agenda.

Hidden Agenda

Mr Simon told his City/Schools Committee colleagues at the July 2010 meeting, "When we get to the actual language of the bond, the bond language doesn't actually refer to co-location of the school, although it's a goal of the School Board and it's mentioned in the resolution, the actual legislation that will be going to the voters does not mention it.  What it does include is some principles of community engagement, so that we are building into the actual legislation a community engagement process that will be voted on by the voters and that we will be, as a school board, held accountable to by our bond counsel.  We will not be able to get the financing without proceeding with this process."

Former Superintendent of the Schools, John Sugiyama concurred with Mr Simon that, when writing the bond language for the voter's perusal, it would be important to keep the co-location agenda hidden.  He told attendees, " Exhibit A1, which is the statutorily required bond project list. I think that it's, the comment I would make about this list, and again this list was developed by bond counsel with staff input, that the key here is to be specific enough to meet the intentions of the law but also at the same time to provide the flexibility so it doesn't lock the district into a specific action. So, a good example was, the co-location issue is not mentioned here anywhere in the resolution or in the project list, while that is a Board goal, that will be work that will be undertaken and studied in the context of the design process. So, we believe, the staff believes, that the bond project list, as it is currently worded, is reasonably clear enough so that the voter will know what the bond dollars will be expended for, but also provides the ability for community engagement and involvement to help in defining in more specific terms what the nature of that expenditure will look like."

The statements made at the July 2010 City/Schools meeting by Mr Sugiyama and Mr Simon are a part of the public record and should now enable any citizens that might want to save Anna Yates Elementary School, to put to rest any co-location insistence on the part of the politicians.  City and School District continue to solicit community input for what its worth, at the design sessions for the Center of Community Life.