Robb is a member of the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District, which followed conventional wisdom and embraced modern security solutions at its schools. The district doubled its security budget over the past several years to invest in a variety of recommended precautions meant to keep kids safe.
According to the security page of the district, the safety management system was designed to screen for dangerous individuals and monitor school visitors. It used a social media monitoring solution to look for signs of violent or suicidal thoughts in children. Parents and community members were able to submit reports of troubling behavior to administrators through an online portal at ucisd.net. The local police department had a relationship with the UCISD police force, as well as having an emergency response plan. TheThreat Assessment Teams were scheduled to meet regularly to identify, evaluate, classify and address threats or potential threats to school security.
None of the new security measures seemed to matter when a disturbed young man brought a legally purchased weapon to Robb and committed the deadliest school shooting in the state's history. The security systems couldn't be monitored by the person who did it.
The new measures were not adopted in a vacuum. The district implemented them after the Santa Fe, Texas shooting that killed eight high school students and two teachers. In the wake of the massacre, Gov. Greg Abbott passed new legislation and published a 40-page list of recommendations to enhance school safety. The governor recommended using technology to prevent attacks, as well as increasing the number of police officers at schools.
The director of the Texas Department of Public Safety admitted during a press conference that security measures had failed to offer the protections they were supposed to.
It's not clear whether miniature fortresses help to stop shootings. There is no shortage of companies that believe their products will make the world a safer place.
Social media monitoring is one of the most common solutions sold to schools. In many districts, trolling through students online to look for signs of danger is a routine procedure. Legislators have considered mandating such features for schools. Gov. Abbott said Wednesday that there was no forewarning of the crime, even though the shooter sent private messages threatening the attack.
Schools can use facial recognition as a basic safety mechanism. In the last few years, the number of schools that have adopted face recording solutions has gone up a lot. Despite their popularity, there is no evidence that these security measures stop school shootings. Even supporters of facial recognition admit that the systems probably won't do much when a shooter is on school property.
The covert weapons scanning is on the rise. According to the companies that make the devices, they can be quietly installed in walls and floors to look for signs of firearms or weaponry. Businesses have courted schools and promised to identify weapons before they become active threats. It's not clear whether they're correct and what the privacy tradeoffs are. In the case of the Uvalde shooting, it's hard to see how a weapons scanner would have prevented anything.
Privacy advocates look at the current trends as well-intentioned if misguided attempts to solve a much more complicated problem if security buffs are interested.
Whether it's facial recognition, monitoring software on school devices, cameras, all of these types of surveillance have become extremely ubiquitous, according to a digital strategist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Kelley said that these products can end up having negative side-effects on the children they are meant to protect. The intrusiveness of the tools can make students feel like they have to be surveilled to be safe.
Some studies suggest that what is provided is punishment rather than protection. The cameras and software can turn schools into little panopticons, where student behavior is constantly analyzed and assessed, and where minor transgressions can be spotted and disciplined. If the systems are good at providing internal regulation to the institutions that deploy them, the question is if they are also good at keeping kids safe. Is it possible for an algorithm or a new scanner to see something that is invisible to the naked eye?
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