Email

By Greg Bartlett

The Dallas Public School district has instituted a pilot program this year that may prove very helpful to troubled teens and their parents. Students that have been in trouble for excessive truancy and court-ordered to attend school are now being tracked using a GPS device that fits in their pocket. There is a virtual fence around the campus of each school in the district that emits a preprogrammed signal any time the student crosses onto or off the campus.

Students who are not in school during designated hours are tracked to their location by the GPS signal and given counseling about the importance of attending school, assistance in getting to school if needed, or disciplinary action is taken swiftly that can include going back in front of a judge if the problem continues.

School district officials report that the goal of the program is not so much punitive as it is to help the students and teach them the importance of staying in school and getting an education. Last year the system tried a pilot programming involving ankle bracelets with radio transmitters for tracking truant students, but officials have unanimously agreed that the GPS teen tracking system is far superior in its ability to locate and track the movements of students when they are not where they belong.

As a secondary benefit of the technology, students who are in danger of falling into the wrong kind of crowd and becoming a burden on the criminal court system are being provided with extra guidance to try to prevent this from happening. If truant students are found to be in the company of known criminals, the police are notified to watch these kids in an effort to make the students less attractive to criminal groups as a member and the life that involves looking over one’s shoulder to see where the police are at any given time less attractive to students.

Being able to track the exact locations of students that have been court-ordered to attend school during those times when the students are not on campus and should be is also making it possible for the school district to collect data on the types of problems most likely to lead to excessive truancy and work to develop programs for future implementation that will, hopefully, eliminate these problems as causative factors for excessive absence from school.