Free Republic

Elementary school children returning to a wealthy Pennsylvania classroom in the fall will learn that sympathizing with police officers is racist. Gladwyne Elementary School in Lower Merion School District, one of the richest in the nation—will require fourth and fifth graders to read Not My Idea: A Book About Whiteness, which claims that white people who relate to police officers or decline to watch the news are complicit in racism. The curriculum also assigns A Kid's Book About Racism to kindergarten and first graders. Elana Fishbein, mother of two boys and a doctor of social work,said, "The book teaches kids...

Eight months after the Lower Merion School District thought it had settled the furor over secret monitoring of students' laptops, the district faces a new legal battle on the issue. On Monday, a 2009 graduate of Harriton High School sued the school district, claiming it violated his civil rights by capturing nearly 8,000 webcam photos and screen-shots from his laptop between September 2008 and March 2009.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- A Philadelphia-area school district agreed Monday to pay $610,000 to settle two lawsuits over secret photos taken on school-issued laptops. The Lower Merion School District admitted it captured thousands of webcam photographs and screen shots from student laptops in a misguided effort to locate missing computers....

Federal prosecutors on Tuesday closed their investigation into Lower Merion School District's secret use of software to track student laptops, saying they found no evidence that anyone intentionally committed a crime. The decision, announced by U.S. Attorney Zane Memeger, ended a six-month probe by the FBI into allegations that district employees might have spied on students through webcams on their school-issued laptops. --snip-- "For the government to prosecute a criminal case, it must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the person charged acted with criminal intent," his statement said. "We have not found evidence that would establish beyond a reasonable...

Legal fees in the Lower Merion School District's webcam case are inching toward $1 million, a sum that could end up handed to local taxpayers. A district spokesman on Monday disclosed that the bills to defend the use of the now-disabled laptop tracking system have grown to about $780,000. At the same time, the lawyer whose lawsuit over the webcam monitoring drew worldwide attention disclosed in court papers that his fees - costs he is likely to ask Lower Merion to pay - were more than $148,000 and climbing. And the district's insurance firm renewed its contention that it shouldn't...

Lower Merion School District employees activated the web cameras and tracking software on laptops they gave to high school students about 80 times in the past two school years, snapping nearly 56,000 images that included photos of students, pictures inside their homes and copies of the programs or files running on their screens, district investigators have concluded. In most of the cases, technicians turned on the system after a student or staffer reported a laptop missing and turned it off when the machine was found, the investigators determined. But in at least five instances, school employees let the Web cams...

Soon after Lower Merion schools started handing out laptops to high school students in 2008, a school board member had a question: Were any being lost or stolen? The query, from Jerry Novick, drew a small smile from the technology chief, Virginia DeMedio. "We did have a theft," she said. "And we have a way we can track them. . . . "There were six that were taken. All but one came back."

The vice chairman of the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission could scarcely contain his scorn. Before the commission was yet another appeal from a Philadelphia-area family, again seeking a break on unpaid electric and gas bills that by last year were closing in on $30,000. This family lived in a $986,000 house on the Main Line. The breadwinner, until recently, had earned well more than $100,000 per year. Yet he and his wife were in hock to creditors, ranging from Uncle Sam to their former synagogue - and had regularly been stiffing Peco Energy for five years, breaking payment plan after...

Source: THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER Two tech workers sidelined in Web-cam case Two information-technology employees of the Lower Merion School District have been placed on leave while an investigation continues into the use of remote surveillance software on student laptops. The two people authorized to activate the software - Michael Perbix, a network technician, and Carol Cafiero, information systems coordinator - were put on paid leave last week while lawyers and technicians examine how the remote system was used, The Inquirer learned yesterday. Lawyers for Cafiero and Perbix said their clients did nothing wrong. Perbix and Cafiero turned on the remote...

The Lower Merion School District, embroiled in lawsuits over laptop cameras and redistricting, faces the possibility of a substantial tax increase for next school year. The current budget contained the largest tax-rate percentage increase in the region. --snip-- Lower Merion was tops in the region in per-student spending in 2008-09, at $21,663; the Philadelphia School District ranked 60th, at $11,426

Lower Merion School District officials brag that they give every one of their 1,800 high-schoolers laptop computers to "ensure that all students have 24/7 access to school-based resources." Instead, they ensured they got a 24/7 sneak peek into students’ private lives by secretly monitoring webcams embedded in the laptops to spy on teens and their families at home, according to a federal, class-action lawsuit filed this week in Philadelphia. The suit alleges the remotely controlled covert cameras violate everything from the Fourth Amendment to wiretapping, electronic communications and computer fraud laws.....

According to the Associated Press, by way of the local Philadelphia ABC affiliate, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has tossed its hat into the ring with regard to Lower Merion School District’s alleged surveillance of students in their own homes by way of remote access to webcam-equipped laptop computers issued by the district’s two high schools to all 1,800 high school students. [...] Parents should be outraged. Students have every right to feel violated. And every American who may have been concerned about “big brother” but considered issues like the remote activation of webcams a little too close to the...

A law-enforcement official with knowledge of the case says the FBI has opened a criminal investigation into a Pennsylvania school district accused of activating webcams inside students' homes without their knowledge. * * * Lower Merion officials say they remotely activated webcams 42 times to find missing student laptops in the past 14 months, but never did so to spy on students, as a recent lawsuit claims.

Webcams can be a window to the world. But a lawsuit filed this week claims they are also a one-way window being used by school officials to peek in on students and their families at home. A federal lawsuit filed Wednesday by the parents of a Harriton High School student alleges that the Lower Merion School District has been remotely spying on students inside their homes through their webcam-enabled district-issued computers. According to the suit filed by Mark S. Haltzman with the firm Lamm Rubenstone, Lindy Matsko, an assistant principal at Harriton, told a minor student in November that the...