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F.A.Q.

Northside ISD San Antonio

112 schools
100,000 students

RFID Pilot Program

Jones Middle School and John Jay High School
4,200 students

THREE GOALS

1.Increase student safety and security. Our students' parents expect that we always know where their children are in our schools.

2.Increase attendance. Through more efficient attendance management, schools can generate additional revenues by identifying students who are not in their seats during roll call but who are in the school and locate them. (Increased attendance = increased state revenues)

3.Provide multi-purpose "Smart" Student ID card. The Student ID will provide access to the library and cafeteria, serve as a photo ID, and allow for the purchase of tickets to schools' extracurricular activities. Other uses will be rolled out during the pilot program.

"Smart" Student ID Cards

I can't think of many big campus-like environments in the adult world --- whatever their purpose --- that don't restrict physical access, movement and access to services through the use of keys, cards, badges and so on.

Game the system and you will be out of a job.

Parents send their kids to the STEM magnet school because they are looking academic rigor and discipline in a safe and secure environment.

what problems are they trying to solve?

From a letter to students:

"This "smart" ID card will transmit location information of students to electronic readers which are installed throughout the campus. This is so that we always know where the students are in the building. After all, parents, you expect school staff to always know where your children are during the school day."

"In addition, the "smart" student ID card will be used in the breakfast and lunch lines in the cafeteria and to check out books from the library. Because all students will be required to wear their "smart" ID, staff will be able to quickly identify Jones students inside the school. It will help us keep non-students out of Jones Middle School."

"One additional feature of the new "smart" ID card is that Jones attendance office staff will be able to manage attendance reporting more efficiently. By reporting increased attendance to the state, Jones Middle School will be eligible for additional funding."

I suspect the "eligible for additional funding" is the main driver...

Since the ID only applies during school hours

From the district website, "The Student ID will provide access to the library and cafeteria, serve as a photo ID, and allow for the purchase of tickets to schools' extracurricular activities. Other uses will be rolled out during the pilot program."

Andrea has already been excluded from being able to vote for Prom King/Queen, and School district Deputy Superintendent Ray Galindo has hinted at additional "consequences". In a letter to the parents, offering the badge with no chip or battery, he stated, "I urge you to accept this solution so that your child's instructional program will not be affected. As we discussed, there will be consequences for refusal to wear an ID card as we begin to move forward with full implementation."

We don't force religious parents to vaccinate their children.

The Northside Independent School District seems to think it's law. From the link labeled "Shots" at the districts Health Services page.

"Immunizations are required by law. Students who do not have completed immunizations will not be allowed to register."

They don't quote any specific statute, and I've never heard of a LAW making it mandatory. I've seen POLICIES saying they are recommended, but never any law. Assuming there really is no law, this would seem to be somewhere in the region of fraud and coercion.

We don't force religious parents to vaccinate their children.

The Northside Independent School District seems to think it's law. From the link labeled "Shots" at the districts Health Services page.

"Immunizations are required by law. Students who do not have completed immunizations will not be allowed to register."

They don't quote any specific statute, and I've never heard of a LAW making it mandatory. I've seen POLICIES saying they are recommended, but never any law. Assuming there really is no law, this would seem to be somewhere in the region of fraud and coercion.

Northside ISD is harnessing the power of radio frequency identification technology (RFID) to make schools safer, know where our students are while at school, increase revenues, and provide a general purpose "smart" ID card.

Empasis added.

The FAQ would seem to confirm this.

Q. What does this pilot cost and what is the projected additional revenue expected?

A. NISD will spend approximately $261,000 on this pilot for the two schools and expects to realize $2 million in additional revenues.

So, they expect an additional $1.739M in revenues out of this deal.

This would match up with my personal experience. I remember being told how important it was for students to be in school during a certain week in September or October, because this determined how much federal funding the school would get. Another example of the feds taking money, then using it to ransom state and local entities to get it back. "See also 55mph speed limits and moving the drinking age up from 18 to 21.

Reading the rest of the district page is fascinating. They go on to say, "The "smart" ID cards only work within the school." Interesting. I didn't know you could turn off an RFID chip, especially one with a battery powering it. Is there some supposed to be some way for it to be turned off automatically when they leave the premises?

After referring parents to the website of the contractor implementing the project, "Wade Garcia & Associates (WGA), we get some pseudo useful technical info.

Q.1 Could someone manufacture a copy of a WGA RFID reader and use it to intercept information transmitted by student RFID tags? A.1 WGA has approached this as an issue of system architecture. By ensuring that the âoesmartâ ID contains no information of interest to anyone, WGA has simultaneously removed any motive for cloning its reader and removed any problem if someone does clone its reader. The premise is simple: There is no information stored on any WGA âoesmartâ ID except its serial number. Therefore, an intruder or âoehackerâ can only learn that the tag serial number is, for example, #69872331, but that does not provide any useful information. The tag serial number is not the studentâ(TM)s school I.D. number. The studentâ(TM)s school ID number is stored on the school or Northsideâ(TM)s internal server and one would have to have access to the school or school districtâ(TM)s server and data base to determine what tag number can be associated with a studentâ(TM)s school ID number.

They don't address the first thing the kids will think of, how to clone the cards and have their friend carry it around and make it look like they are in class. I wonder what happens when someone figures out how to clone the cards, and there are 5 copies of every kids cards wandering around the school. That would be an interesting way to hack the system.

The FAQ also goes on to give some shocking information about Texas law regarding what information is "public", quoting from Texas Public Information Act, Texas Government Code, Chapter 552.

Another exception permits a school to non-consensually disclose personally identifiable information from a student's education records when such information has been appropriately designated as directory information. "Directory information" is defined as information contained in the education records of a student that would not generally be considered harmful or an invasion of privacy if disclosed. Directory information could include information such as the student's name, address, e-mail address, telephone listing, photograph, dat

Northside ISD is harnessing the power of radio frequency identification technology (RFID) to make schools safer, know where our students are while at school, increase revenues, and provide a general purpose "smart" ID card.

Empasis added.

The FAQ would seem to confirm this.

Q. What does this pilot cost and what is the projected additional revenue expected?

A. NISD will spend approximately $261,000 on this pilot for the two schools and expects to realize $2 million in additional revenues.

So, they expect an additional $1.739M in revenues out of this deal.

This would match up with my personal experience. I remember being told how important it was for students to be in school during a certain week in September or October, because this determined how much federal funding the school would get. Another example of the feds taking money, then using it to ransom state and local entities to get it back. "See also 55mph speed limits and moving the drinking age up from 18 to 21.

Reading the rest of the district page is fascinating. They go on to say, "The "smart" ID cards only work within the school." Interesting. I didn't know you could turn off an RFID chip, especially one with a battery powering it. Is there some supposed to be some way for it to be turned off automatically when they leave the premises?

After referring parents to the website of the contractor implementing the project, "Wade Garcia & Associates (WGA), we get some pseudo useful technical info.

Q.1 Could someone manufacture a copy of a WGA RFID reader and use it to intercept information transmitted by student RFID tags? A.1 WGA has approached this as an issue of system architecture. By ensuring that the âoesmartâ ID contains no information of interest to anyone, WGA has simultaneously removed any motive for cloning its reader and removed any problem if someone does clone its reader. The premise is simple: There is no information stored on any WGA âoesmartâ ID except its serial number. Therefore, an intruder or âoehackerâ can only learn that the tag serial number is, for example, #69872331, but that does not provide any useful information. The tag serial number is not the studentâ(TM)s school I.D. number. The studentâ(TM)s school ID number is stored on the school or Northsideâ(TM)s internal server and one would have to have access to the school or school districtâ(TM)s server and data base to determine what tag number can be associated with a studentâ(TM)s school ID number.

They don't address the first thing the kids will think of, how to clone the cards and have their friend carry it around and make it look like they are in class. I wonder what happens when someone figures out how to clone the cards, and there are 5 copies of every kids cards wandering around the school. That would be an interesting way to hack the system.

The FAQ also goes on to give some shocking information about Texas law regarding what information is "public", quoting from Texas Public Information Act, Texas Government Code, Chapter 552.

Another exception permits a school to non-consensually disclose personally identifiable information from a student's education records when such information has been appropriately designated as directory information. "Directory information" is defined as information contained in the education records of a student that would not generally be considered harmful or an invasion of privacy if disclosed. Directory information could include information such as the student's name, address, e-mail address, telephone listing, photograph, dat

http://www.nisd.net/schools/

It appears it is a large school district. They have 71 elementary schools, 18 middle schools and 15 high schools along with 8 special schools (I'm guessing career and vocational centers and developmental needs facilities). That's 112 schools, if each misses counting 8 students a day because of lateness or some practice causing them not to be counted the one time they take attendance or something, it comes out to a much larger number of 898 students not being counted per day. 315 students being under-counted comes out to about 2.8 students per school per day.

Otherwise if you choose c#, the ony decent ide is visual studio which will cost you a fortune.

We've used SharpDevelop http://sharpdevelop.com/ at our school for the past couple of years in our C# classes, and have found it to work out quite well. Having a program that can develop .Net on Win 98 computers is an added benefit for those of our students with, shall we say, Legacy equipment?

I haven't had a chance to do any real work with Mono http://www.monodevelop.com/Main_Page, but I hear from some students that it works well.

We've found that C# from a visual perspective works as a good transition language in our Pre-AP classes, and gets the students well acclimated for our AP class in Java.

Keep in mind this isn't a small program. Our school has between six and eight classes in Computer Science (both Pre-AP, AP Year 1, and AP Year 2) annually.