Charles Hadlock, NBC News writes
SAN ANTONIO, Texas -- Two San Antonio schools have turned to radio frequency identification (RFID) technology to help administrators count and track the whereabouts of students on campus.

Students at Anson Jones Middle School and John Jay High School are required to wear ID cards imbedded with electronic chips, similar to highway toll tags, which allow schools to more accurately record daily attendance.  Public school funding is often tied to the number of students attending class each day. The Northside Independent School District in San Antonio receives about $30 per day in state funding for each student reporting present.

The RFID tracking system can help schools count students who are in the school building, but may have missed the morning roll call.  On a recent morning at Anson Jones Middle School, where 1,200 attend, the traditional roll call counted 71 students absent.  But the RFID system indicated that eight of those 71 were actually in school that day.  A map indicated several students were in the band hall, where practice was running late, while others were near the office.  That’s eight times $30 or $240 the school would have lost that day in funding.

Pascual Gonzalez, Northside’s communications director, estimates the entire district has been losing about $1.7 million a year because of underreported attendance. He says the RFID system, which costs $261,000, should pay for itself in the first year.

“The revenues that are generated by locating kids who are not in their chairs to answer ‘present,’ but are in the building  –  in the counselor’s office, in the cafeteria, in the hallway, in the gym  –  if we can show they were, in fact, in school, then we can count them present,” he said.

Principal Wendy Reyes says the system has the added benefit of allowing her to find a particular student instantly.  “Sometimes it’s difficult to locate a student in a sea of 1,200 others, so this helps locate them in an emergency,” she said.

The ID tags can only be read on campus, so students cannot be tracked outside the building.

Some parents and students fear the radio ID tags are just too much Big Brother.

Steve Hernandez, whose daughter is a sophomore, objects to the tags on Biblical grounds.  He compared the badges to the “mark of the beast” as described in the Book of Revelations.  “My daughter,” he says, “should not have to compromise (her) religion just because Northside Independent School District wants to get paid.”

The American Civil Liberties Union calls the RFID tags “dehumanizing.”

“What kind of lesson does it teach our children if they’re chipped like cattle and their every movement tracked?” asks Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst with the ACLU’s Washington, D.C. office.  “It doesn’t create the kind of independent, autonomous people that we want in our democratic society.”

Gonzalez, Northside’s spokesman, says school administrators have no intention of spying on students.

“There’s a misconception that somebody’s sitting in a room with a bank full of monitors looking at where 1,200 kids are here at Anson Middle School. That’s not true,” he said. “It’s not even feasible. We’re not staffed nor are we interested in knowing where all the kids are at a particular moment.”

What the RFID system does do, according to Gonzales, is provide an accurate, daily census of students, which helps the district make money. Based on early results, the district may consider expanding the RFID system to its other 109 schools, encompassing nearly 100,000 students.
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http://dailynightly.nbcnews.com/_news/20...bject?lite

Students who refuse to walk the school halls with the card in their pocket or around their neck claim they are being tormented by instructors, and are barred from participating in certain school functions. Some also said they were turned away from common areas like cafeterias and libraries.
Andrea Hernandez, a sophomore at John Jay, said educators have ignored her pleas to respect her privacy and told her she cannot participate in school elections if she refuses to comply with the tracking program.
Hernandez said in an interview with Salon that subjecting herself to constant monitoring through an RFID chip is like being branded with the “mark of the beast” – a reference to the Bible's apocalyptic Book of Revelations. When she reached out to WND with the school’s response, though, she said that she was threatened with not being allowed to vote for her school's homecoming king and queen for disobeying the student ID rule.

"I had a teacher tell me I would not be allowed to vote because I did not have the proper voter ID," Hernandez told WND. "I had my old student ID card which they originally told us would be good for the entire four years we were in school. He said I needed the new ID with the chip in order to vote."
After Hernandez refused to wear an RFID chip, WND reported that Deputy Superintendent Ray Galindo issued a statement to the girl's parents: “We are simply asking your daughter to wear an ID badge as every other student and adult on the Jay campus is asked to do.” If she is allowed to forego the tracking now, the repercussions will be harsher than just revoking voting rights for homecoming contests once the school makes location-monitoring mandatory, he argued.

“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,” Galindo wrote.
The girl’s father, Steve Hernandez, told WND that the school was somewhat willing to work with his daughter, but said that the family is unwilling to “agree to stop criticizing the program” and publically endorse it.
“I told him that was unacceptable because it would imply an endorsement of the district’s policy and my daughter and I should not have to give up our constitutional rights to speak out against a program that we feel is wrong,” Mr. Hernandez responded.

http://rt.com/usa/news/texas-school-id-hernandez-033/

..... And the mark of the beast begins ....

Just wait.

This will soon be required as a national ID system for all citizens

Oh shi*.

Then again, I have assumed this would happen for some time. Screw it, if it does happen, I'll at the very least protest in some form or the other. Not a snowball's chance in hell the government is doing that, at least not in the UK

of course the UK wouldnt try to track its citizens. ( I know, this isnt the sarcasm thread )

This post was last modified: 10-15-2012 01:28 AM by skyblue1 .

Evidence?

By the way, RFID chips are easy to fry.

Sorry, what I meant to say was, we would not allow that to happen. The British government is nothing but a load of rich as*holes, their lapdogs and a boring and lazy opposition party.

We'll not allow that to happen.

@Gareth

Tell me how if and when this happens.

just supposition

How to fry RFID chips?
That's easy, connect wires to 2 of the input terminals on the chip, apply massive voltage.

Alternatively, but more dangerous, microwave for 3 seconds.

It's somewhat irresponsible to feed into people's paranoia by making such statements without any evidence.

I seem to remember two recent presidents supporting the idea of a national ID. The funny thing is the Republican party opposed it when Clinton tried to do it, because it was an infringement on people's privacy. They the supported it when Bush tried to do it, complete with RFID chips.

For some things it could simplify matters a lot, if you're concerned about privacy it's easy enough to shield an RFID chip so it can only be read when you choose - people already do this for passports for example.

How about my own paranoia?

Evidence would be Orwell`s 1984 and many other movies, documentaries, news shows, talk in the barber shops and bars,etc.

Supposition. Everyone does it.

Allows coversations to continue.

Movements to grow

Revolutions to begin

Changes to happen

Or not.