First topic: Confer App and Privacy Issues
On May 10 at the Board of Education there was a group of teachers and supervisors that were presenting, according to them, what will make their lives easier when teaching in a classroom. It is the “Confer” app — you can Google it — www.conferapp.com. The first thing you read as soon as you go to the webpage is ”Update: Confer accounts will remain free and Confer will still receive maintenance updates as necessary. However, we will no longer be able to provide e-mail support as we are focusing on releasing Snapfolio 2016.”
The second thing that I looked for was the price. I went to iTunes and the app is $24.99, which is one of the most expensive apps out there!
As a parent the issue of privacy has always been a big concern for me. Who is watching my kids? Can an app be hacked? Let me give you a little background regarding Confer. The idea that the school administration at WW-P has is to give an iPad to each teacher so the teacher can write on this app the name and last name (remember privacy issues) of each student and take notes. For example:
Mary Smith she is improving in her reading. She is ready to go to the next level.
The teacher can write different growth objectives of the student, group the students accordingly, even take a picture of the work that the student is doing and uploaded on the app (once again privacy issues).
Why do I keep coming back to this point? Because when the owner of the app says that “However, we will no longer be able to provide e-mail support as we are focusing on releasing Snapfolio 2016,” is because he has already moved on to another app and this one becomes “stagnant” or discontinued, hence it becomes very vulnerable as nobody is investing money to make sure it does not get hacked.
Let me ask you, as a parent, how would you like that seven or nine years down the road, the code has been cracked and everybody can see all the notes that different teachers have been writing about your child all over internet? Maybe your child gets bullied? Maybe your child does not get a job offer? Maybe your child does not get the scholarship? That will be following your child for the rest of his life as it is on internet now. Why? Because this app is stagnant and the “privacy issues” today are already weak at best.
I decided to call FERPA (please Google it as well) — the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. FERPA is linked with the U.S. Department of Education and it reads “Schools must notify parents and eligible students annually of their rights under FERPA.” So far WW-P has never notified me. Did it happen to you?
Anyway, they were very interested in hearing what I was telling them about this app and the fact that it was discontinued, so they told me to call the Family Policy Compliance Office. I spoke with a very nice lady who was extremely interested and told me that it “could” be a violation of privacy. However, a final answer will be given to me on Friday.
My question is, has the Board of Education bothered to do all the due diligence that I have done or have they decided to drink the Kool Aid and approve it and put all the students’ information at risk?
If the app gets hacked and somebody’s information gets disseminated on internet that is opening Pandora’s box and WW-P will be held liable. Is it really worth it? That is the beginning of class action lawsuits.
Maybe it is better and safer to re-think it again.
In addition, I am a believer that good teachers do not need an app to write notes. Good teachers know their students because they have a rapport with them. Excellent teachers will never “lose a post-it” as it was presented on May 10. Excellent teachers are very organized and will never lose a tiny little paper. They value the eye contact with the student more than looking at an iPad.
I believe that teachers will use this app as a crutch, it was said at the meeting. “Technology does not drive the teacher.” Well in my experience, when the smartphone did not exist I knew all the telephone numbers by heart. Now that I have my Samsung I don’t even know my nanny’s number. Obviously I do rely on technology more then I should. Do you think teachers will not do the same? I guess the JURY is still out on that one!
Second topic — MAP testing:
Since last September you paraded countless “consultants” (I would like to know how much money it cost, and how much less student support services the schools are providing due to that bill) stating that there is so much stress in school and hence, the best thing was to get rid of A&E.
Later the focus changed: it was to “expand” the pool of students that could take A&E at a later year, hence it would be a good idea to postpone it to sixth grade and not start in third grade.
However, Gerard Dalton has been very vocal and said that we are a “testing community,” that is he put a “math test there would be a line in front of it and no one would ask questions.”
Is this the reason that now you are testing kindergarten to seventh grade students with the MAP (Measures of Academic Progress) test? Stop testing students Mr. Aderhold! It is wrong to test students so young!
What is going on? Teachers cannot teach if students are not given a “standardized commercial test.” Please do not tell me that MAP is diagnostic. MAP is far from being diagnostic.
There is too much hypocrisy in all your statements. I guess you are bringing too many “rookie teachers from Rider” and they need a guide to be able to do their first job, hence let us just test more and more students. The testing of the students has cost $113 thousand. This amount of money could have been used for something productive and not another standardized test that has no added value.
Third topic: Budget and Student Support Services
The budget that was approved for 2016-’17 has an increase in taxes of 2.33 percent and a decrease in student support services of 3.1 percent. The administration is asking parents to pay more taxes yet, the students get less in the classroom. This should be unethical and unprofessional for any logical administration! However, at the Board of Education meeting the administration is asking to move $2.5 million to the capital reserves account. Basically, we do have a surplus, we do have the money, so
1. Why are the taxes going up?
2. Why are student support services are going down?
3. Why “we” the parents are paying more for our children to receive less?
Fourth topic: The addition to Village School that cost more than $14 million.
Nobody is asking for the administration to work under extreme and unhealthy conditions. However, it is unbelievable that an addition to a building that is supposed to be so high tech that it is said to have all these energy-savings features and architectural innovations costs $14 million.
What it is more unbelievable is that we the people are not allowed to see what our money has paid for! On May 11 a group of parents went to see the offices and requested a tour, and we were told that Larry Shanok (who makes over $200,000 in salary) would show us the offices on May 16. Later we received an e-mail from Gerri Hutner saying that the tour had been cancelled and an open house was going to take place. That of course was more than four weeks ago. It seems the administration/Board of Education does not want we the people to see what our $14 million paid for.
My only advice to the administration is that the addition to Village does not belong to them. The addition to Village belongs to we the people who paid for it with our hard-earned tax money.
Veronica Mehno
