Biloxi Public Schools first district in country to install video cameras in every classroom
CITYWIDE Would the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District make room in its classrooms for Big Brother?
Several weeks have passed since the community was alerted to the controversy involving Malibu High School students posting footage of classroom sessions on YouTube without the consent of the teachers or classmates shown in the videos. YouTube is a popular Web site that gives users free rein to post videos on the Internet.
Administrators have responded by trying to regulate the use of cell phones, which aren’t allowed during school hours, and stress the impropriety of filming teachers.
Still, in the process, some would contend the students were on to something.
Along with the potential benefits of installing cameras in the classroom — namely, holding teachers accountable and ensuring against misbehavior in the classroom — the idea also raises a slew of concerns, including privacy infringement and the creepy feeling that “Big Brother” is watching teachers’ and students’ every step.
School Board Vice President Oscar de la Torre doesn’t believe the Santa Monica- Malibu district would ever consider installing cameras in the classroom, at least not while he’s on the board. While Americans appear more willing to let the government infringe on their privacy rights in the post-9/11 world, de la Torre said surveillance of classroom activities is still decidedly un-American.
“We already have cameras protecting the periphery of the school at Samohi,”the school board member said on Thursday. “And even with that, we have incidents on campus where the cameras were totally ineffective.
“I’m not a supporter of cameras in the periphery or in the classroom.”
Installing cameras would create more problems than it would solve, said Harry Keiley, president of the Santa Monica- Malibu Classroom Teachers Association. Not only would such a thing raise privacy issues for teachers, it would raise the same concerns for students.
“I don’t think it’s the solution that we’re looking for,” Keiley said on Thursday.
But such cameras seem to have been effective in the Biloxi Public Schools in Mississippi, where they were first installed in a new elementary school six years ago in the wake of the Columbine shootings in Colorado. By 2003, more than 900 cameras were installed, capturing every classroom in the district, making Biloxi Public Schools the first district in the country to install such widespread usage.
Surprisingly, the measure wasn’t met with the opposition or resentment that one would imagine. In fact, most of the concerns over cameras in the classroom were sent from the Northwest, said Biloxi Public Schools Superintendent Paul Tisdale on Thursday.
Once teachers were informed that the cameras were also to ensure their safety, the district’s teachers seemed to warm to the idea, Tisdale said.
The students are not under constant surveillance in Biloxi. There is no designated person sitting in front of a wall of cameras, contrary to what many people would believe, Tisdale said. The cameras are not used for teacher evaluation purposes.
The cameras have come in handy for clearing up acts of vandalism and theft.
“I think it makes a number of kids think twice about doing something (bad) if they remember the cameras are there,”Tisdale said. “But if someone walked in with a bazooka, will it prevent an incident with a camera? Not unless we knew they were coming.”
Malibu High School Principal Mark Kelly isn’t so sure a camera would be the most effective way to create transparency.
“It’s a lot more complicated,” Kelly said on Thursday. “Who is monitoring? For what purpose? Is this how we want educators spending their time, reviewing tapes in the classroom? “Those are the questions that would come to me.”
A growing number of parents seem open to the idea of cameras in the classroom, just as long as they aren’t misused and abused.
Walking home in the rain with her grandson after school on Thursday, Carol McKeown said she would love the idea of eyes in the sky at a middle school and high school. She doesn’t see much need for it at an elementary school, however, where parents and grandparents are welcome to come in and sit in on a class.
“I don’t think good teachers would have anything to hide,” McKeown said, walking away from Franklin Elementary School after picking up her grandson.
Waiting for her own child to finish class on Thursday, Leila Furman, the parent of a second grader at Franklin, couldn’t decide whether cameras should be installed in the classroom. Furman doesn’t feel such surveillance would be necessary in an elementary school.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on February 23, 2007. Read the original PDF.