I'm a member of the Boulder Valley School District's "District Accountability Committee" or DAC. Each school in the district has a representative that meets once a month at district headquarters to hash out policy, budget, and other recommendations to the school board.

At last night's DAC meeting, during the Q&A period following our Superintendent's briefing (in which he brought up the ongoing problem of kids vaping in school bathrooms), I mentioned an amazing talk I saw at this past @defcon #DEFCON33 called "Unmasking the Snitch Puck: The creepy IoT surveillance in the school bathroom" - video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCnojaEpF2I

You see, New Vista High School, which just opened a brand new building, has installed these devices, called a Halo 3C Smart Sensor, in all the bathrooms and elsewhere inside the school building, and has made a measurable impact reducing the number of vaping-in-school incidents. But, as I told superintendent Anderson, the sensor itself brings along with it some seriously problematic security vulnerabilities, in addition to the undocumented capabilities that the researchers in the talk exploited.

The superintendent's response to that made the whole room bust out laughing: "Andrew, you never fail to bring to my attention things that scare the hell out of me" - to which I responded, literally my job, Rob. It's why they call it "Threat Research" my guy.

This is why every community board, council, committee, etc. needs a thoughtful hacker present, to relay important information like this to policy implementers and policy makers who just don't keep up with this space.

#BVSD #schoolboard #edtech #edpolicy #techpolicy #Boulder #COpolitics

UPDATE (11:40am): BPD found the person who the "reporting party" reported; that person was not armed, and is wearing a workout vest. The original reporter verified that the person police found is the person he reported. So, no weapon found, police are starting to wind down the search. Just another day in paradise.

#boulder police are conducting a sweep at #BVSD #Fairview high school in Boulder, looking for a person reported to be seen in the area holding "something that looks like a gun" - massive police presence, and air units are sweeping the area, school and the neighborhood is on lockdown, no injuries reported. Live stream of Boulder Police available from https://www.broadcastify.com/listen/ctid/247
#Colorado #COpolitics #FairviewHS

Last night I attended the #Boulder BVSD school district's District Accountability Committee meeting. I am the representative to my kids' high school at the DAC, that advises the school board on policy matters. It's a commitment I made to staying involved in local school operations, regardless of the outcome of the election last year.

The DAC is considering updates to policies surrounding the searches of and interrogations of students on school grounds. The DAC policy subcommittee made several positive changes that strengthen the protections this policy gives to students, who under these kind of circumstances are obviously in a power-imbalance situation.

But there was one change that I couldn't abide, and when I brought it up, it started a nearly hourlong debate in which many other DAC representatives chimed in with their own concerns.

The change was to give schools the permission to search students' mobile devices and laptops. It was a one-line insertion into an existing policy that gives school officials permission to search student lockers.

I made the point that phones/laptops often contain highly sensitive, personal information that falls outside the scope of any legitimate investigation, and that the language was overbroad and failed to take into account the need for student data privacy and limiting the scope of the search, and raises significant civil rights issues.

Another DAC member raised the issue that the policy seems to lay the responsibility for students maintaining the security of their devices on the students, even when an adult has access to those devices, which seemed weirdly out of sync.

Yet another DAC member was concerned that there was no guidance about how such searches would be conducted, and under what circumstances. Doesn't changing a policy like this lead to potential 'fishing expeditions' on specious evidence or even just allegations of misbehavior without evidence?

In the end, the DAC thought this policy would sail through and be passed along to the BVSD board for their approval next week. I think the policy needs significant rework and there's no way the board should pass it in its current form. I will speak at the school board meeting next week to get that point across, because the way it looks right now, I would not want my name connected to this policy.

#COpolitics #BVSD #SchoolBoard #policy #electmorehackers #4thAmendment #PolicyHackers #education #USPol

I am not sure how writing meaningless nothings is supposed to help these children. The district does not have a good track record. If they want to do something, they should a) shutter schools that repeatedly fail at this stuff and b) provide some training for their educators at schools that are mediocre at this stuff.

#BVSD is terrible for both autistic and dyslexic kids.

https://boulderreportinglab.org/2024/06/16/bvsd-takes-step-toward-adopting-groundbreaking-neurodiversity-policy-for-schools/

Last October, while in the home stretch of an off-year campaign for elected office, a political candidate's inbox received a series of email-borne attacks. @SophosXOps investigated both the business email compromise (BEC) and the phishing emails the candidate received.

https://news.sophos.com/en-us/2024/06/13/election-phishing-campaign/

#politics #COpolitics #phishing #spam #BEC #BVSD #SchoolBoard #ElectMoreHackers

@rayckeith Here's the link to the original story...

https://energynews.us/2020/10/16/this-arkansas-school-turned-solar-savings-into-better-teacher-pay/

...which was derived from a report by Generation 180, a group that advocates for solar PV installations in public schools.

https://generation180.org/resource/brighter-future-a-study-on-solar-in-us-schools-2020/

#EdTech #Solar #solarpunk #BVSD

#BVSD #Boulder is currently experiencing a district-wide internet outage.

School operations and dismissal procedures will continue as normal.

Check our Emergency Communications webpage for updates: https://www.bvsd.org/parents-students/be-ready/emergency-information

Well I didn't win my election, but my interest in #SchoolBoard policy is not going away.

Tonight, immediately after the new board members are sworn in, I will be presenting a public comment to #BVSD about their use of #GoGuardian, a technology that presents itself as a monitoring tool to ensure that kids visit age- and developmentally-appropriate websites on their school-issued laptops.

In October, the #EFF published a report about the privacy-invading and false-positive-prone tool. https://redflagmachine.com/research/

The report highlights key problems about the software misidentifying benign websites with run-of-the-mill, unharmful content as potentially harmful or containing explicit content. Poetry by the Bronte sisters, the text of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, and even the text of Romeo and Juliet set off red flags. So did words in the Texas driver’s handbook, and health information websites. These false positive warnings are touted by GoGuardian not as a bug but as a desirable feature of the product.

My concern here is that routine use of GoGuardian sends two very damaging messages to students: It normalizes routine surveillance, and it tells students that they cannot be trusted to use their computers responsibly.

I will be giving public comment to the new board asking them to direct school administrators to investigate the district's contract with GoGuardian, and to seek out a less invasive, more accurate method of protecting children who use computers.

If you wish, you can watch the board proceedings on their youtube livestream, starting at 6pm MST (UTC-7). The link is https://www.youtube.com/@bouldervalleyschooldistric5781/streams

#Boulder #COPolitics #EdTech