Global positioning systems have become a staple of our daily lives, but the student tracking devices showing up on school campuses these days raise a host of legal issues.

These products, initially designed for senior citizens with dementia, now are marketed to parents of children with autism who may tend to elope. From the school’s perspective, there’s no problem with parents using GPS to monitor their kids’ whereabouts. Congress itself has promoted standards for voluntary use of this technology by adopting Kevin and Avonte’s Law in 2018, in memory of two autistic children who lost their lives after wandering off.

The problem is that some of these devices have a “listen in” feature that allows parents to eavesdrop on whatever’s within earshot of their child. That is where many school districts are drawing the line.

Infringing Privacy
Balancing student safety and individual rights in the school community always is a challenge. Our courts and legislatures have been called upon to reconcile this tension in a wide range of settings from locker searches in schools to social media posts. Typically, it’s the school district being accused of violating others’ rights. But when parents listen in, they’re the ones who may be infringing on the privacy of other students in the classroom or on the school bus.

A recent case from Nevada has garnered national attention as parents and districts across the country stake out this new legal battleground. A teacher in a Las Vegas-area school district was accused of beating a 6-year-old nonverbal student with a wooden pointer. The student’s parents wanted to send their child to school with an AngelSense™ GPS tracker with listening capability so they could hear whatever was going on around their son.

The school district denied their request on privacy grounds. Last April, a state hearing officer backed the district, citing state laws prohibiting eavesdropping on private conversations without the consent of at least one party and limiting electronic surveillance at schools other than for security purposes. Similar laws are on the books in many other states. The hearing officer also doubted that listening could prevent future abuse.

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act provides additional confidentiality protection for those other students’ personal in-formation. Allowing parents to listen in poses a significant risk of noncompliance.

Accommodating Vendor
Some vendors, recognizing the privacy rights at stake, have shown a willingness to modify their customer agreements to accommodate these concerns. I first encountered AngelSense™ in my law practice several years ago. I was representing a private special education school that had no objection to GPS tracking per se for one of its autistic students but would not permit the student to come to school with the device if the family could remotely activate the listening feature. Unlike a cellphone that could be confiscated by school staff, the device was fastened to the student’s clothing and school staff understandably were reluctant to remove it. Sadly, the student stayed home until this standoff could be resolved.

AngelSense™ initially proposed sending the school an e-mail if the parent activated the listening feature during the day. That was a nonstarter since school staff could not be expected to monitor their e-mails throughout the day looking for these alerts. To my pleas-ant surprise, after a few conversations with the company’s president, the firm agreed to customize their standard service agreement to include a guarantee by AngelSense™ itself that the feature would be disabled during specified hours — in this case, from bus pickup time in the morning until dropoff in the afternoon. Problem solved.

The lesson here is that many players in the ed-tech industry recognize that even when they market their products directly to students, parents and staff, it doesn’t make business sense to antagonize school districts and private schools where this technology may be used.

School administrators and their legal counsel should not be intimidated by standard vendor agreements. You may find you have more bargaining power than you think and that vendors acting in their own enlightened self-interest may be prepared to partner with you on creative solutions.

DAVID RUBIN, an education attorney, is of counsel to the Busch Law Group in Metuchen, N.J. Twitter: @dbresqnj