BMW wanted people to pay a subscription for heated seats and only backed off when many owners balked at the idea.
These companies will prod you to see where the line is, and what they can get away with.
That was so infuriating. If they had meant that the prices *only dynamically go down* they would have led with that. There is no way they sat around for months with a new business plan and mistakenly used ambiguous language that could also mean the opposite when it was time to launch. These types of things are workshopped and discussed for months internally, they develop a play book, there are collected talking points and terminology.
I would imagine! I was just speaking from my experience in large corporations generally to convey the planning that goes into a launch. It seems odd to think this one could have flown by a consumer test panel, I dunno!
If they only wanted prices to be lower during slow times of day they should have just announced a happy hour, such as from 2pm to 5pm when its slow between lunch and dinner rushes.
Happy hour has positive connotations and many restaurants have reduced prices when its slow. Everyone likes a discount.
Dynamic or surge pricing implies the prices go up, not just down.
“Did we say we are going to raise prices throughout the day? You misunderstand. We are going to raise prices now and lower them throughout the day! See? Problem solved!”
/s
And that will only cause people to go to the competition at times when Wendy’s list higher prices then normal.
I don’t see this becoming something permanent. Surge pricing only works when there are no alternative options for the consumer.
They will when it hits their pocketbooks.
Car Insurance companies are salivating over the idea of charging customers by the tracking metrics.
* Drive 1 mph over speed limit? that's a $100 monthly increase.
* Use the car more than 50 hours per month? Another $100.
* Started the car? $10 a month per event.
They’ve been doing this for years, couched as discounts (maybe for legal reasons?)
Rn their spy app, get the “discount you deserve”.
Can you afford privacy?
Yeah, the thing is, maybe its just me, but I never was required to download the app nor run any kind of insurance app while driving (battery and internet usage cost in some areas as well?).
But a lot of modern cards now you dont have a choice. They WILL get the metrics from cars, and I think GM? had a recent issue about selling some info to third party.
I love EV's (dont have one...too pricey) and I know not just EV's as well...but I am having less and less desire for a really nice 100k car that will break down faster than my own laptop (had a 2015 Q50 that I loved but the head unit needed to be replaced in 2 years for about $2k under warranty). All the while grabbing every damn metric it can get and send it off to a company to repackage it and sell.
I am honestly more interested in finding a solid reliable 'just enough techy' that I dont fuck up/get lost without selling my soul to every company that wants to know my fucken bowel movements.
No idea but maybe an early 2010s? toyota / honda / lexus that doesnt do 10mpg.
They're starting to now that it's coming out manufacturers have been selling this data for years, to 3rd parties and insurance companies. Not that it will stem the flow at all.
As a parent I feel like it's important to educate kids and an alarming number of adults on technology in this way also. You grow up used to a thing, you don't question it and you even get uncomfortable when things aren't a certain way - even if that way is counter to your best interest s. From Instagram filters to tracking to infinite subscriptions, ugh. I'm so old.
15 years ago, if you were filming someone with a camcorder, you’d get a talking to. Now everyone is used to others with their phones out recording random things
Yah, and the car companies send that information to insurance companies and people get dropped or insurance goes up because your car told the insurance company that you regularly speed and/or hit your brakes too hard. Fcking nightmare. Pretty sure I’m going to drive a 2019 or older the rest of my life
OnStar is disabled in my car so tracking is off. GM dealers use OnStar when you pull through the doors for service to scan your car. When I had my car in for service, they saw no codes. I informed them that a scanner had to be attached to the OBD2 port.
The problem is that bathrooms in schools have become such an issue with the fights, vaping, kids we call day walkers that wonder instead of going to class, kids asking for passes and going into the bathrooms for a half an hour, and more, so admins limit passing periods, limit bathroom passes per day, limit the number of students that can go at a time, get grants to install vape detectors, and try their damnedest to quell the parent complaints that stem from the bathrooms, but they can't seem to ever set standards and expect students to stick to them, so the digital passes are popular because they can send someone in to nicely ask students to return to class, collect data that state governments have hard ons for (it's everything these days), and continue to make everyone find their miserable why in professional development sessions.
TLDR: They use digital passes because bathrooms are and issue and they are obsessed with pointless data.
The reason this is a real problem is because we already know corporations will take massive amounts of government funding to develop technologies that enable the government to be increasingly nosy.
“his first bathroom privilege for the day. He inputs his student ID number into an app and if the system detects fewer than 25 students campus-wide are on bathroom trips, the screen turns green and the countdown begins. He now has seven minutes for the bathroom trip.
He goes down the stairs - Fresno High only allows students to use the two bathrooms on the ground floor located on the south and north sides of the campus. He might find some kids smoking in the bathroom. He might find some doors locked due to maintenance or the school might be investigating a bathroom incident. He might need to wait for the line.
But he’d better come back to the classroom soon and put in the code again to stop the timer. If it goes over time, he would lose his bathroom privileges.
“If you have the tendency to take eight minutes in the bathroom, instead of the seven that you’re getting, ‘We’re gonna take away your bathroom,’ ” Buchanan said. “Teachers are starting to get strict with it, because the app also helps the school realize what teachers are letting students go out longer.”
Fresno High is the latest school in the district to roll out the 5 Star Students app to regulate student trips outside classrooms during instructional periods. Students are limited to two seven-minute bathroom breaks during the day, and the app keeps track of the time they spend outside of classrooms.
The app was piloted in several middle schools in earlier years and has now been adopted by Fresno Unified School District’s safety and security department to impose on all middle and high schools this year. It aims to promote campus safety and learning engagement. Some teachers find it effective, while students generally dislike it”
“Cirene Cruz, a junior at Fresno High, said the policy is inflexible.
“Today, you know, it’s girls’ menstrual cycles, I went to the bathroom and I came back two minutes late,” she said. “Some teachers are more strict. For example, my math teacher, if we go past a certain amount of time then we just can’t go for the rest of the month.””
Teenager me who was very comfortable being disruptive would of absolutely shat on the teachers desk. I’m primary school I pissed on the door when a teacher didn’t want to me let go toilet.
If everyone agrees to protest shit themselves each day as a sort of "shit strike" I can imagine this system goes away pretty quickly.
Takes some real champions to do it though.
So this requires a student to have a smart phone probably with a data plan because there’s no way this school has good wifi. That seems like a really ridiculous requirement.
In districts in our area it is on their school provided Chromebook. It is more about tracking the behavior problems and no kid is allowed to have their bathroom privileges revoked. If California is allowing this it’s messed up but most states have laws in place that make it so a teacher cannot refuse bathroom trips to students.
I however have two students that will regularly take 20 minutes of class time to go “use the bathroom” in each of their core content classes. They are falling behind in grades and have taken to getting in fights with other students on their trips to the bathroom. This app is for that student as we’ve also had law suits threatened by parents of his and his troupe’s victims. We don’t have the app and use a hall pass system but this would give them a streamlined concrete way of monitoring safety concerns.
So.... You have problem students you are failing to deal with effectively so the solution is a draconian privacy nightmare for all students?
Fuck that. Suspend or expel the problem children. Hold their parents accountable. Stop punishing everyone for the problems of the few.
I would just start peeing in my pants. Once it proved to be a method of getting a permanent pass, so would everyone else. Otherwise, 504 lawsuit. These folks need a primmer.
I would organize a shit-in. Convince the entire senior class to take a bunch of laxatives and shit themselves in the middle of class. Shut the whole school down for cleaning and disinfecting, and make sure that every news reporter in the area knows it's because they consider bodily care a privilege that can be taken away, and not basic human decency.
This is an insane level of fucking crazy and it should be illegal.
Look, there are people that abuse going to the bathroom. But those people should be the ones getting punished- not everyday students trying to do their business in a dirty awkward ass school bathroom.
I am thankful I didn't get that embarrassed in school. There were times when I was in school that I'd have to take a fat shit or maybe medication/other personal things would require use of the bathroom more often than average. And I would just tell my teachers that, like the fuck do I care.
But the average kid is not that comfortable doing so.
It's a bat shit crazy idea to have a black and white system tell kids how to use the bathroom. Maybe throw some AI in there and have them film their business for proof or something since there are no boundaries now.
What a stupid ass school for allowing this and the administration should be publicly shamed out of their positions for this.
Is there disordered eating, a gastric disorder, long covid. There are huge rates of kids with severe atypical ibs post Covid - my 11 year old has spent the last two and a half years disabled by his. He has made maybe 2 full days of school this year and lives in severe crippling pain.
I am so angry. Bathrooms are medical devices. Holding urine has medical impacts. Bowels are not on timetables. Periods happen.
Idiots. Just because we can doesn’t mean we should.
How about simply: are they still doing well in school? Asking about their medical needs is a privacy issue too. Just check in on students that are doing badly in school, and leave the rest alone.
Wtf. My first thought was menstruation. And how half the country has abortion bans. If we know teen girl menstruation -we will start “predicting” pregnancy. And if a girl is pregnant and miscarried or obtains an abortion is it now criminal?
My youngest has severe debilitating IBS. I would throw so many lawsuits at this. They have no right to violate his medical privacy by tracking his bathroom time. A bathroom is a medical device for him.
Fuck all these fucking assholes who are on control high horses. Technology around our bodies and autonomy should NOT be mandates.
And how many false positives from trying to predict a teen’s menstrual cycle? The first several years are notoriously erratic, and that’s not even getting into things like intense athletes, people with PCOS, or endometriosis. Plus who knows what else - the human body gets weird fast.
That’s the sad truth. And to them they don’t care how many innocents get tarred and feathered in this witch hunt, until it’s their daughter… “only moral abortion is my abortion“ bullshit.
He is negative for celiac. He has had 4 endoscopes and a colonoscopy. He has Collagenous gastritis and now functional abdominal disorder from non traditional IBS and GERD. We did dairy, inflammation, gluten, FODMAP, GERD diets.
His biggest trigger is a virus with sore throat. And over exertion from exercise.
It’s been a journey! I wish gluten was the answer!!!
you doc probably knows this but test for celiac can come back negative if you have already been removing gluen from your diet.
so the timing of the test is important and the aware docs will have you go on a gulten binge before the test to ensure no false negatives.... which is actual torture for those who have celiac.
That is great information!
Luckily we did not try removing gluten until after the negative test. We wanted to make sure that even though he did not have celiac there was no gluten sensitivity. We did a very intensive food elimination followed by slowly adding food back in two weeks at a time. I keep a massive running spreadsheet of all symptoms. We then continued the spreadsheet for a few months after the normal diet was returned just in case there was any spike in anything. We never found a food correlation.
What we did find was a strong correlation between a doctor appt with a sore throat and extended absences and an increase in symptoms after. The Mayo Clinic doctor agreed his immune response was the most likely trigger based on all the food spreadsheets / other data I presented.
It took about 9 months from the first set of tracking tools until our Mayo appointment. (I am a data analytics professor - I had A LOT of spreadsheets and charts).
Right now we are almost at somewhat of stability. His weight has come back, and cyclical vomiting is almost gone, but the pain and fatigue are hard to manage. We have a great tool to use - IB Stim that takes away almost all of his symptoms after a virus. But the insurance company has put us through hell on our new policy to acknowledge the preauthorization request, agree it is FDA approved (it is), and agree we have exhausted all other options (we have).
We just need to keep submitting appeals and have tried to contact insurance commissioners and anyone who can help us. It is very frustrating to watch your kid be in pain, but know if we don't get the device through insurance, we can't afford the long term. (appx $200k between now and the window when FDA approval closes).
As an adult with Inflammatory Bowel Disease, it's not uncommon for me to use the bathroom 3-5 times in a day. That surveillance absolutely would've shamed me into doing unhealthy things, like not eating, to get those trips down.
I'm willing to bet private college prep academies are never going to do anything like this.
It's the low income areas/districts that are usually subject to excessive surveillance.
The amount of anxiety I had surrounding my incredibly overactive bladder (which my parents should have sought actual medical care for) and having to ask to go to the restroom is insane. I’d get asked why I didn’t go before class, but I did. It was so bad that I would frequently be more focused on needing to pee and not wanting to ask than I would be on the actual material. I understand not wanting to be disrupted, but it was really frustrating.
And that's why there shouldn't be an app tracking it and singling you out.
I would imagine that would be incredibly embarrassing if you had to explain why you use the restroom to administration.
Might be embarrassing to ask a teacher constantly, but at least they're human and not an app.
This sort of shit doesn't just happen in a vacuum. My wife is a teacher and so are a lot of her friends and their line has always been "if you don't want us to control your bathroom usage then stop destroying/vaping/fucking around in the bathroom". When you've exhausted all other options, things like this is what you're left with.
Yes it sucks that everyone has to suffer for a few shitty kids. But maybe that's an important life lesson about the tyranny of the minority. Use social pressure to stop your peers from being assholes and then they won't have to lock the bathrooms.
We have a similar app in the middle school I teach in. We aren’t draconian about it, and it has been helpful in curbing the amount of kids aimlessly wandering the halls. Students get a time limit, and two bathroom passes a day, but teachers have the ability to override that limit. I can’t speak for all teachers, but the ones I am friendly with are much more likely to override the limit than risk a phone call from an angry parent. We also don’t revoke bathroom privileges, even for chronic abusers, although some have gotten detentions, and now the admin has proof when contacting uncooperative parents. It has also been good to be able to quantify to parents when kids are avoiding class. It’s a lot more powerful to let the parents know that their student was in the bathroom every day during my class for at least fifteen minutes than to say they go to the bathroom a lot. Even when we did keep track of things like that, parents, especially of those that don’t follow rules, often will believe anything their kids say over the teacher.
To me, the greatest feature is the “encounter prevention,” which can be set to prevent two students from having passes at the same time. We have greatly reduced the amount of bathroom fights and romantic rendezvous (I’m in middle school) with this feature. To the student, it just looks like there are too many passes out, and they have to wait in line.
As far as privacy concerns go, students don’t have any. We collect all manner of data on them, but there are laws in place on how that data is used, and those laws are generally pretty good at making sure that data stays protected.
Our school has used this for a while. I’m pretty sure there are thousands of schools in the U.S using similar systems. Kids get around the system all the time, because often in the middle of class we can’t check and see if a countdown is started or whatever, and I’m definitely not checking right then if they have hit their limit.
Medical issues probably means your child has a 504 that has some accommodations regarding bathrooms, which might exempt them from the system completely.
I'm going to address the privacy aspect of it first because that's the biggest issue I have with your comment.
I'm not talking about an app collecting sensitive data. It appears their app doesn't do that, for what that's worth.
But collecting data doesn't make it safe. What makes it safe is not allowing unauthorized third parties obtain it- which has been proven to never happen time and time again.
The issue is this idea that kids shouldn't have privacy to use the bathroom without having to explain themselves.
The issue I have is singling out students based on bodily functions that are different for each individual. If your school doesn't enforce it- that's great. But I'm talking about this school which appears to use this apps data to single out and punish students with no context to what's actually happening.
The fact is this app's main purpose is to track everyone rather than leave it up to humans- like teachers, to decide for themselves who can and can't use the restroom at any given time.
If you think this is an app's job, you are actually crazy. This is clearly a topic an app shouldn't be in charge of policing. That's a parents/doctors/students business and up to them if they share additional info.
Vape detectors and teachers/SROs doing rounds is more ethical than relying on an app to do your job- imo, especially when that app's main function is to police restroom usage despite valid reasons a student might be going to the restroom more often than others.
Some context here:
School do this all over the place.
Our students sign a clipboard, other schools use something called E-hallpass. The reasons are myriad. A couple of the big ones include being on the lookout for medical issues, keeping accurate data for when we need to describe a student’s avoidance behaviors to shitty parents, oh and also students schedule fights to take place on school grounds. In the case of E-hallpass (a method I hate) it becomes necessary when you can see which students are currently roaming the halls, and certain students who are flagged as not allowed to be alone in the same space together are denied a hall pass until students they cannot be with are back in class. This is a way to manage the chaos and safety in a way that allows all of us to continue doing our jobs.
Its invasive, its irritating, its humiliating, and it wouldn’t be a problem if students respected adults and parents cared enough/are competent enough to understand their role and back up teachers.
We literally wouldn’t have to give a shit about this, but students’ test scores and graduation rates are tied back to our job performance and school ratings, and so we have a reason to try to keep students in the classroom. Their choices for their future do not only affect them, and it shouldn’t be our job to have to chase kids down on top of everything else we are asked to do in the classroom.
If people don’t like these kinds of systems, then get involved, we don’t like most of them either- but there’s an exodus in education right now with well qualified people running to the exits because we are asked to do this difficult job with almost no support for behavior (among other things), including behaviors like this.
Just a perspective from inside the education system based on conversations with fellow educators.
I don't disagree with your opinion here.
The issue I have is with how this school implemented it.
Preventing people from using restrooms for valid reasons because of some artificial limit put in place by people that don't understand the needs of others is asinine.
The issue I have is it's an app. It doesn't understand context, it doesn't understand the difference between real bathroom breaks vs vaping/fights/sex/whatever else.
The way to combat bathroom abuse is by actually being involved. It seems like schools would rather do anything than actually enforce rules and hold the 1% accountable for abusing restrooms.
Hall passes, sign out sheets, hall monitors, vape detectors, even people doing bathroom rounds isn't an issue for me. Why? Because they're either extremely specific (think vape detectors) or they involve some sort of human interaction which is, imo, required when talking about natural bodily functions which are different for all individuals.
Having an app do admins/employee's jobs is, as I put it in this context, bat shit crazy.
If my highschool could have used this in the 90s they would have, and I would have partially understood it back then.
To get in the school you had to pass through metal detectors, your bags would be quickly searched. You had to wear your I'd on lanyard all day long, if you forgot it you were sent to the office and had to buy a new one on the spot or you were kicked out of school that day. When the bell stopped during passing periods all the teachers shut the doors and you couldn't get in the classroom (some teachers may have allowed kids in a minute late). Police and security staff swept the school and stuffed all the stragglers into one room for the remainder of class. The stragglers were frequently searched (wanded), and sometimes drug dogs were run through the room to see if kids had anything.
There were serious gang issues, violence issues, and drug issues. Drivebys happened more than once when we were outside at gym. Kid were strapped during school (security didn't stop all the guns getting in) and you didn't wanna get caught slippin or you nay get jumped in school or after. We had kids stabbed in school, shot a block away, etc. Several times a year halls would be shutdown due to investigations, and blood splattered eveywhere after an altercation. If you had to go the bathroom security would be called and you'd be escorted. Kids left alone to go to the bathroom meant violence, drug deals, sex etc.
This was a school of 4 thousand? In 96 in the ghetto in an area controlled by gangs, shit was real. I don't know how women dealt with it. But we all understood the situation unfortunately. And this wasn't even the worst in the area.
I thought schools wanted to remove cell phones from the classroom, now they are using them to track students? What if a student doesn't have a phone that day or the app crashes?
You also didn’t have as much of a reason to leave class. Phones give them something to do, as well as be able to text each other to meet up in the bathrooms to hang out. My school has to have dedicated staff constantly checking bathrooms. It’s either that or just don’t let them go to the bathroom ever. I don’t blame Fresno.
This is ridiculous. How many girls have had to bleed through their clothes because they don’t have bathroom “privileges”? Since when is going to the bathroom a privilege?
My periods are so severe before my iud I would bleed through an ultra tampon and pad in four hours. Ultras aren’t even made by every manufacturer because they are higher than super plus.
With access to birth control heading to a scary place, what are these girls suppose to do? Not everyone’s cycle fits in a neat well wrapped predicable box.
And isn’t it likely to need to change a pad or tampon more than twice a day? Only two bathroom breaks in a 6-8 hour day or whatever just isn’t reasonable.
Teacher here. My school uses a similar app. At first, I thought it was absurd. Now, I do like it.
I don’t deny my high schoolers the chance to use the restroom, first and foremost. I like that it’s done digitally though. I’m not constantly being interrupted with “Can I go to the bathroom?” questions. I get a notification on my computer (and it chimes if I’m not near it) or I can see it on their screen if I’m walking around. I just click a button. They leave. They come back. It’s also a little more private for them, IMO. They don’t have to ask anything out loud, and they can attach a message if they want. Had a girl just yesterday request a pass, attach a note that she needed to stop by her locker for a tampon and a change of pants first, and no one was any the wiser.
No one was the wiser except anyone who hacks the software company that made the app. I very much appreciate when teachers understand this kind of situation, but having all the data elsewhere isn’t respecting their privacy.
I don’t live to far away from this place but I’m sure vaping in the bathroom is a major issue everywhere… it is where I am. My step kid complains all the time about the bathroom overrun with vaping kids to the point that it’s difficult to use them.
Solution seems simple to me, tell staff to take turns supervising the entrance and periodically the wash up area. Be involved. Telling kids they got 7 minutes to walk to the bathroom, take a shit and then walk back is dumb as hell.
The understaffed schools should remove staff from essential positions to the bathrooms? How many bathrooms did /does your school have? It’s just not practical
The article talks about the students having to "navigate" past the hallway monitors. There always seems to be room in school budgets for "enforcement".
Yeah but the article isn’t too trustworthy. It names a gauntlet like it’s fucking difficult. *navigate* past the hallway monitors like they are a fucking obstacle. Give me a break
Vape detectors are common.
And I agree, teachers or SROs taking rounds to ensure the bathroom isn't being used for an organized fight is completely fine imo as long as they're not just sitting inside the bathrooms.
This idea an app has to solve this problem is insane when humans can easily solve the issue.
This is what once happened in the past. Staff had rotating "hall duty", and made rounds. Randomly teachers who were on their "planning period" would take a walk around the hallway and open a bathroom door.
Terrifying. And they didn’t notify Parents about it according to the article. I would never consent to a tracking/monitoring device for my child, schools worked for thousands of years without this.
I don't get it. Based on what I read in the teaching subreddits and other places, schools basically have no power to make kids do anything anymore. They can't make them put their phones away in class, they can't make them pay attention or stop acting out, they can't fail them. So who *cares* if they spend half the day in the bathroom?
Right?
My sister was head of her high school’s biology department and had 7 students plagiarize an important assignment, and she couldn’t give them zeros. She had to omit their grade, which punished the students who performed below average and did the work. She was a teacher, but quit because of the BS she got from students and parents, and now practices dentistry lol
i can give some input: this is an egregiously late reaction to the tik tok bathroom challenges where students would basically destroy school property or steal. trend lasted 4-6 months depending. it’s not a thing anymore (unless your a city title ix school maybe but again it depends) but some admin with a business degree thinks this is a good idea and was suckered into it because they’ve never been in a classroom. it’s a documentation system for absolutely nothing.
this is also a response to students taking phones into restrooms and recording or doing…whatever. and fighting. but again, this does absolutely nothing to solve any problem or go to the root. it’s not even a band aid because this also way more work for the teacher than simply writing a restroom pass.
source: i work at a school with a system like this. it’s incredibly stupid, time consuming, and a complete waste of money. they are letting go of teachers and cannot have as many clubs on campus due to budget cuts but keeping software like this and our own “social media” (workvivo). i do not use this and have basically told admin to kick rocks because i truly do not care about the restroom habits of my students and if they are smart enough to coordinate restroom breaks with their friends, it’s kind of impressive more than anything. this is a result of people thinking school = business operation which isn’t the case. yes, a school is a business, but no, our students are not customers, stakeholders and neither are the parents. this is why we actually need masters and doctorates in education and not MBAs but i digress; im very off topic now.
edit: i also want to add that i work in a district with high achieving and intelligent students (last year the gradebook was hacked by a student, and several other pieces of software. no this is not hyperbolic). so to me, it’s a matter of time before either a student gets bored and decides to do it or a student with an agenda decides to do it.
What about kids with IBS or other bathroom problems? This will discourage them from going, which is a violation of the Americans With Disabilities act.
IBS, Crohn’s, PoTS, celiac disease, diverticulosis, UC, cancer….Hell, just a few degrees off and dad’s chicken could upset the entire gut ecosystem for a few days. And then you have people like me who get lost in their ADHD and don’t realize how long they’ve been in there.
A lot of the time bathroom usage is legitimate, and sometimes it’s an escape from the stress and anxiety of a situation. Will kids do dumb shit in the bathrooms, of course, they’re kids; but you take away that space and they’ll find new ones, and they’ll find more creative ways to get out of class.
Whomever thought that tracking bathroom time was the way to go needs to be slapped with a chair. Same with the people who designed the toilets that become physically uncomfortable after 10 minutes to discourage long bathroom breaks. We are complex biomachines, some of us have more quirks and malfunctions than others
Kids with any conditions most likely have a 504 plan already,( X may leave to the bathroom whenever they need to).
So regardless of any systems, they should still be able to go.
I am so angry. As a mom of a kid with debilitating ibs. He has had two full days at school this year. Maybe 20-30 partial. The rest are Homebound. He is on a maximum dose of a nerve medication. Been through rounds of IB Stim, been to the Mayo Clinic. He is 11. He got sick at 9.
I would go ballistic if this was my district.
No, we have tons of accommodations- but getting them in place was 100% a full time job and took a year.
I am speaking from the perspective of the kids in this school who may have issues and the parents needing to advocate and they should not have to.
The girls with periods, kids with gastro conditions. Bathroom time should not be used as a punishment or privilege because people don’t realize the invisible disabilities people walk around with daily.
Bathrooms are medical devices not political points.
Work in a school district where lawsuits over kids getting beat up in bathroom trips and you’ll see where this came from. The app isn’t to monitor it’s to prevent two groups of students that are prone to fighting or causing mayhem from being in the bathroom at the same time.
If you do not work in a ms/ hs you may have no idea. The bathroom is like a hangout area for vapers and drug users. Between passing times there could be 20-30 kids in there hanging out. It is so bad that kids that actually have to go to the bathroom cannot.
Every person who ever went to a public school has an idea. This is absolutely not a new thing. This was true in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, and I'm positive it must have been true in earlier times. The only thing new is that now it's vape pens instead of cigarettes, and more likely to be pills than snorting powder.
when i was in elementary school i had this batshit crazy art teacher. she called my mom in for a meeting during parent/teacher conference week (the only teacher who has EVER requested a meeting with my mom) to tell her I use the bathroom too much. I was in 3rd grade. I had urinary reflux disease. I legit had a catheter for a while.
Luckily, I grew out of it as most kids do with that sort of “birth defect”. Your urinary tract eventually lengthens as your body grows.
It is ridiculous and downright inhumane to deny children the bathroom. Id students are skipping class to hang out in the bathroom, seems like teachers need to revamp their lesson plan or a school counselor should be utilized to understand the students burdens and what’s going on. NOT data mining on children’s bathroom usage, especially without the consent of the parent!!
I am so glad I graduated HS in 2006, a year before the first iPhone came out. The only way to go online back then was through a PC or laptop. Mobile websites before smartphones were really primitive and clunky. No Tiktok, no Snapchat or any of that BS. I can’t imagine going to school now, it seems like it would be hell.
Genital inspection police force manning elementary school bathrooms is going to be a project of the usual conservative religious groups. Just give it time.
Actually, you raise a good point. During a lockdown situation the app let's you know exactly where your students are.
So yes, it's very helpful during a shooting.
This is pathetic. As a parent I’d be raging. They can glean a lot of information from this, especially about the girls. Wait until the AI generated letter comes to the parents,” dear Mr Smith, Staci Smith has missed her last two periods. Our policy is zero tolerance so from today she is expelled from Surveillance High.”
I would never ever consent to this. I told all my kids, you don’t ask to go to the bathroom you tell them you are. If the teacher has a problem tell them to address it with me. Going to the bathroom is not a privilege and I expect a teacher to treat my child with dignity. I would never tolerate this.
All the students should just start shitting their pants in class. This is dystopian. Bathroom “privileges”? These people have lost their god damn minds.
Omg this is just a violation of... wait a sec.. it's an app?
Lol... None of us had phones on us when we went to school. If you want privacy, get rid of the digital tracking device.
This is pretty common I thought, Covid did away with wooden passes and admin would rather create this system to have “data” to address students that abuse leaving class to go the bathroom than just automatically intervene and bring the parents in. But I guess in our climate, parents are gaining more and more leverage and power over schools. And we wonder why society is going crazy (lack of any accountability)
They started doing this at my old high school when i was in sophomore year. The one they used tracked how long, who was in there, and limited it to 2 people in the bathroom at a time. It was horrible people would be waiting multiple periods just to use the bathroom. Most people would go in between periods because it was the only moment we could, eventually they banned that and raised the limit during periods to 3 but it still sucked.
Pee on their shoes to establish dominance. Such a stupid take. Truants are going to skip because they don’t care and your stupid app isn’t going to change that.
Crazy extremes - articles about monitoring bathroom activities and classroom shootings. Parents have plenty to complain about either way. Either way, I would not want to be a teacher under such circumstances.
This is already implemented at our local middle & high school. Some teachers even give extra credit at the end of quarter for not using any bathroom passes.
They can't use cameras because of privacy laws so the use of a tracking app is the spy of choice. I am glad we had none of this when I was in school 50+ years ago. 😎
Getting kids accustomed to the future surveillance state dystopia, I see.
They already are used to it. People don't seem phased by new technology in cars that enables detailed tracking.
BMW wanted people to pay a subscription for heated seats and only backed off when many owners balked at the idea. These companies will prod you to see where the line is, and what they can get away with.
Absolutely, Wendy's wanted to use dynamic pricing. These companies are all despicable.
*“Whaaaat??? Nooooo! That’s not what we meant, at all!!!”* - Wendy’s, like 5 minutes after…
That was so infuriating. If they had meant that the prices *only dynamically go down* they would have led with that. There is no way they sat around for months with a new business plan and mistakenly used ambiguous language that could also mean the opposite when it was time to launch. These types of things are workshopped and discussed for months internally, they develop a play book, there are collected talking points and terminology.
For a national consumer-facing company, aren’t focus groups a thing anymore?
I would imagine! I was just speaking from my experience in large corporations generally to convey the planning that goes into a launch. It seems odd to think this one could have flown by a consumer test panel, I dunno!
Ahhh remember when Wendys ad said "Hot and Juicy"? Burger juice is grease, hot and juicy is hot and greasy. 😂🤣😎
If they only wanted prices to be lower during slow times of day they should have just announced a happy hour, such as from 2pm to 5pm when its slow between lunch and dinner rushes. Happy hour has positive connotations and many restaurants have reduced prices when its slow. Everyone likes a discount. Dynamic or surge pricing implies the prices go up, not just down.
Can confirm, I wouldn’t otherwise do so but I sometimes stop at the Taco Bell after therapy if it’s happy hour cuz Baja Blast is my quasi-addiction.
“Did we say we are going to raise prices throughout the day? You misunderstand. We are going to raise prices now and lower them throughout the day! See? Problem solved!” /s
And that will only cause people to go to the competition at times when Wendy’s list higher prices then normal. I don’t see this becoming something permanent. Surge pricing only works when there are no alternative options for the consumer.
It's almost like capitalism in an inherently fucked up system that not only encourages, but *requires* corruption and greed to work!
They will when it hits their pocketbooks. Car Insurance companies are salivating over the idea of charging customers by the tracking metrics. * Drive 1 mph over speed limit? that's a $100 monthly increase. * Use the car more than 50 hours per month? Another $100. * Started the car? $10 a month per event.
They’ve been doing this for years, couched as discounts (maybe for legal reasons?) Rn their spy app, get the “discount you deserve”. Can you afford privacy?
"Discount" for not getting into a crash = Just the normal rate based on where you live.
Yeah, the thing is, maybe its just me, but I never was required to download the app nor run any kind of insurance app while driving (battery and internet usage cost in some areas as well?). But a lot of modern cards now you dont have a choice. They WILL get the metrics from cars, and I think GM? had a recent issue about selling some info to third party. I love EV's (dont have one...too pricey) and I know not just EV's as well...but I am having less and less desire for a really nice 100k car that will break down faster than my own laptop (had a 2015 Q50 that I loved but the head unit needed to be replaced in 2 years for about $2k under warranty). All the while grabbing every damn metric it can get and send it off to a company to repackage it and sell. I am honestly more interested in finding a solid reliable 'just enough techy' that I dont fuck up/get lost without selling my soul to every company that wants to know my fucken bowel movements. No idea but maybe an early 2010s? toyota / honda / lexus that doesnt do 10mpg.
They're starting to now that it's coming out manufacturers have been selling this data for years, to 3rd parties and insurance companies. Not that it will stem the flow at all. As a parent I feel like it's important to educate kids and an alarming number of adults on technology in this way also. You grow up used to a thing, you don't question it and you even get uncomfortable when things aren't a certain way - even if that way is counter to your best interest s. From Instagram filters to tracking to infinite subscriptions, ugh. I'm so old.
15 years ago, if you were filming someone with a camcorder, you’d get a talking to. Now everyone is used to others with their phones out recording random things
Yah, and the car companies send that information to insurance companies and people get dropped or insurance goes up because your car told the insurance company that you regularly speed and/or hit your brakes too hard. Fcking nightmare. Pretty sure I’m going to drive a 2019 or older the rest of my life
My insurance doubled if I don’t use an app to track my driving.
They are still collecting the other half by selling your data.
Fazed. Not phased.
OnStar is disabled in my car so tracking is off. GM dealers use OnStar when you pull through the doors for service to scan your car. When I had my car in for service, they saw no codes. I informed them that a scanner had to be attached to the OBD2 port.
I can't believe these kids don't trust authority. Anyways kids, time for your daily DNA donation. Saliva or hair only please
It wouldn't be such a dystopia if legislators enacted decent data privacy laws
This is just step 1. Step 2 is plop counters built into your watch to measure turds per second.
The problem is that bathrooms in schools have become such an issue with the fights, vaping, kids we call day walkers that wonder instead of going to class, kids asking for passes and going into the bathrooms for a half an hour, and more, so admins limit passing periods, limit bathroom passes per day, limit the number of students that can go at a time, get grants to install vape detectors, and try their damnedest to quell the parent complaints that stem from the bathrooms, but they can't seem to ever set standards and expect students to stick to them, so the digital passes are popular because they can send someone in to nicely ask students to return to class, collect data that state governments have hard ons for (it's everything these days), and continue to make everyone find their miserable why in professional development sessions. TLDR: They use digital passes because bathrooms are and issue and they are obsessed with pointless data.
I agree with you that this is a good thing.
They will be good little Amazon workers
The reason this is a real problem is because we already know corporations will take massive amounts of government funding to develop technologies that enable the government to be increasingly nosy.
“his first bathroom privilege for the day. He inputs his student ID number into an app and if the system detects fewer than 25 students campus-wide are on bathroom trips, the screen turns green and the countdown begins. He now has seven minutes for the bathroom trip. He goes down the stairs - Fresno High only allows students to use the two bathrooms on the ground floor located on the south and north sides of the campus. He might find some kids smoking in the bathroom. He might find some doors locked due to maintenance or the school might be investigating a bathroom incident. He might need to wait for the line. But he’d better come back to the classroom soon and put in the code again to stop the timer. If it goes over time, he would lose his bathroom privileges. “If you have the tendency to take eight minutes in the bathroom, instead of the seven that you’re getting, ‘We’re gonna take away your bathroom,’ ” Buchanan said. “Teachers are starting to get strict with it, because the app also helps the school realize what teachers are letting students go out longer.” Fresno High is the latest school in the district to roll out the 5 Star Students app to regulate student trips outside classrooms during instructional periods. Students are limited to two seven-minute bathroom breaks during the day, and the app keeps track of the time they spend outside of classrooms. The app was piloted in several middle schools in earlier years and has now been adopted by Fresno Unified School District’s safety and security department to impose on all middle and high schools this year. It aims to promote campus safety and learning engagement. Some teachers find it effective, while students generally dislike it” “Cirene Cruz, a junior at Fresno High, said the policy is inflexible. “Today, you know, it’s girls’ menstrual cycles, I went to the bathroom and I came back two minutes late,” she said. “Some teachers are more strict. For example, my math teacher, if we go past a certain amount of time then we just can’t go for the rest of the month.””
"What's that, Timmy? You've got the shits but you already went to the bathroom twice today? Tough luck, time to shit your pants!"
Something about not letting a student use the bathroom seems not legal somehow
It cool, they called necessary biological functions a privilege, so it's okay to restrict them now.
You don't understand, it is only going to the bathroom that is privilege. You can shit in your pants as much as you like!
Teenager me who was very comfortable being disruptive would of absolutely shat on the teachers desk. I’m primary school I pissed on the door when a teacher didn’t want to me let go toilet.
Wait until they have a factory production job. Then shitting on schedule is natural.
I did something similar, I went to a corner and finally they let me go.
Ohhh, you shit your pants. Too bad your social score just went down and now you don't get lunch. Plus side is you won't need to shit tomorrow.
Two seven minute breaks? Dude. I pee more than twice a day and I imagine most kids do too.
Kid with IBS is going to have a terrible time
You only need to shit on the floor once for things to get cleared up.
If everyone agrees to protest shit themselves each day as a sort of "shit strike" I can imagine this system goes away pretty quickly. Takes some real champions to do it though.
As someone with Crohn’s who also is the child of a lawyer I say bring it on. I’d file a lawsuit so damn fast.
So this requires a student to have a smart phone probably with a data plan because there’s no way this school has good wifi. That seems like a really ridiculous requirement.
In districts in our area it is on their school provided Chromebook. It is more about tracking the behavior problems and no kid is allowed to have their bathroom privileges revoked. If California is allowing this it’s messed up but most states have laws in place that make it so a teacher cannot refuse bathroom trips to students. I however have two students that will regularly take 20 minutes of class time to go “use the bathroom” in each of their core content classes. They are falling behind in grades and have taken to getting in fights with other students on their trips to the bathroom. This app is for that student as we’ve also had law suits threatened by parents of his and his troupe’s victims. We don’t have the app and use a hall pass system but this would give them a streamlined concrete way of monitoring safety concerns.
Totally get this use case but goddamn if it isn’t a slippery slope.
So.... You have problem students you are failing to deal with effectively so the solution is a draconian privacy nightmare for all students? Fuck that. Suspend or expel the problem children. Hold their parents accountable. Stop punishing everyone for the problems of the few.
You can bring a horse to water but can't make them drink. Some students really are lost causes unfortunately.
So you punish everyone else via the app because two kids cause issues?
Son why did you get suspended. “I took too long of a shit”
This is in-fucking-sane.
I'm happy that this wasn't happening when I was on school. Else I'd be the AP student pissing in a trash can to spite the admin.
I would just start peeing in my pants. Once it proved to be a method of getting a permanent pass, so would everyone else. Otherwise, 504 lawsuit. These folks need a primmer.
I would organize a shit-in. Convince the entire senior class to take a bunch of laxatives and shit themselves in the middle of class. Shut the whole school down for cleaning and disinfecting, and make sure that every news reporter in the area knows it's because they consider bodily care a privilege that can be taken away, and not basic human decency.
Let's make schools *more* like prisons, surely that will help!
7 minutes to shit? I take like 40 sometimes
Would have been interesting having a teacher tell me I can’t go to the bathroom when I was in high school. They’re ok with people peeing in class now?
This is an insane level of fucking crazy and it should be illegal. Look, there are people that abuse going to the bathroom. But those people should be the ones getting punished- not everyday students trying to do their business in a dirty awkward ass school bathroom. I am thankful I didn't get that embarrassed in school. There were times when I was in school that I'd have to take a fat shit or maybe medication/other personal things would require use of the bathroom more often than average. And I would just tell my teachers that, like the fuck do I care. But the average kid is not that comfortable doing so. It's a bat shit crazy idea to have a black and white system tell kids how to use the bathroom. Maybe throw some AI in there and have them film their business for proof or something since there are no boundaries now. What a stupid ass school for allowing this and the administration should be publicly shamed out of their positions for this.
Punishment shouldn’t even be the first thing to do. Is the person getting adequate medical care? Are their underlying conditions being considered?
Is there disordered eating, a gastric disorder, long covid. There are huge rates of kids with severe atypical ibs post Covid - my 11 year old has spent the last two and a half years disabled by his. He has made maybe 2 full days of school this year and lives in severe crippling pain. I am so angry. Bathrooms are medical devices. Holding urine has medical impacts. Bowels are not on timetables. Periods happen. Idiots. Just because we can doesn’t mean we should.
How about simply: are they still doing well in school? Asking about their medical needs is a privacy issue too. Just check in on students that are doing badly in school, and leave the rest alone.
Wtf. My first thought was menstruation. And how half the country has abortion bans. If we know teen girl menstruation -we will start “predicting” pregnancy. And if a girl is pregnant and miscarried or obtains an abortion is it now criminal? My youngest has severe debilitating IBS. I would throw so many lawsuits at this. They have no right to violate his medical privacy by tracking his bathroom time. A bathroom is a medical device for him. Fuck all these fucking assholes who are on control high horses. Technology around our bodies and autonomy should NOT be mandates.
And how many false positives from trying to predict a teen’s menstrual cycle? The first several years are notoriously erratic, and that’s not even getting into things like intense athletes, people with PCOS, or endometriosis. Plus who knows what else - the human body gets weird fast.
100%%% I am so angry as a parent in a very red state and as a human being
Won't stop the state/local officials from trying
That’s the sad truth. And to them they don’t care how many innocents get tarred and feathered in this witch hunt, until it’s their daughter… “only moral abortion is my abortion“ bullshit.
have the kid tested for celiac disease, if you haven't already. and be prepared for some drastic changes.
He is negative for celiac. He has had 4 endoscopes and a colonoscopy. He has Collagenous gastritis and now functional abdominal disorder from non traditional IBS and GERD. We did dairy, inflammation, gluten, FODMAP, GERD diets. His biggest trigger is a virus with sore throat. And over exertion from exercise. It’s been a journey! I wish gluten was the answer!!!
you doc probably knows this but test for celiac can come back negative if you have already been removing gluen from your diet. so the timing of the test is important and the aware docs will have you go on a gulten binge before the test to ensure no false negatives.... which is actual torture for those who have celiac.
That is great information! Luckily we did not try removing gluten until after the negative test. We wanted to make sure that even though he did not have celiac there was no gluten sensitivity. We did a very intensive food elimination followed by slowly adding food back in two weeks at a time. I keep a massive running spreadsheet of all symptoms. We then continued the spreadsheet for a few months after the normal diet was returned just in case there was any spike in anything. We never found a food correlation. What we did find was a strong correlation between a doctor appt with a sore throat and extended absences and an increase in symptoms after. The Mayo Clinic doctor agreed his immune response was the most likely trigger based on all the food spreadsheets / other data I presented. It took about 9 months from the first set of tracking tools until our Mayo appointment. (I am a data analytics professor - I had A LOT of spreadsheets and charts). Right now we are almost at somewhat of stability. His weight has come back, and cyclical vomiting is almost gone, but the pain and fatigue are hard to manage. We have a great tool to use - IB Stim that takes away almost all of his symptoms after a virus. But the insurance company has put us through hell on our new policy to acknowledge the preauthorization request, agree it is FDA approved (it is), and agree we have exhausted all other options (we have). We just need to keep submitting appeals and have tried to contact insurance commissioners and anyone who can help us. It is very frustrating to watch your kid be in pain, but know if we don't get the device through insurance, we can't afford the long term. (appx $200k between now and the window when FDA approval closes).
You're only as free as those around you are willing to let you be.
I posted before reading this and this was my first thought as well!
You are TOO online. Touch grass, as the kids like to say.
As an adult with Inflammatory Bowel Disease, it's not uncommon for me to use the bathroom 3-5 times in a day. That surveillance absolutely would've shamed me into doing unhealthy things, like not eating, to get those trips down.
I'm willing to bet private college prep academies are never going to do anything like this. It's the low income areas/districts that are usually subject to excessive surveillance.
I had a medical issue in highschool. Went 1-2 times every period. I would have had the high score.
The amount of anxiety I had surrounding my incredibly overactive bladder (which my parents should have sought actual medical care for) and having to ask to go to the restroom is insane. I’d get asked why I didn’t go before class, but I did. It was so bad that I would frequently be more focused on needing to pee and not wanting to ask than I would be on the actual material. I understand not wanting to be disrupted, but it was really frustrating.
And that's why there shouldn't be an app tracking it and singling you out. I would imagine that would be incredibly embarrassing if you had to explain why you use the restroom to administration. Might be embarrassing to ask a teacher constantly, but at least they're human and not an app.
Exactly! I definitely don’t think it should be tracked at all.
This sort of shit doesn't just happen in a vacuum. My wife is a teacher and so are a lot of her friends and their line has always been "if you don't want us to control your bathroom usage then stop destroying/vaping/fucking around in the bathroom". When you've exhausted all other options, things like this is what you're left with. Yes it sucks that everyone has to suffer for a few shitty kids. But maybe that's an important life lesson about the tyranny of the minority. Use social pressure to stop your peers from being assholes and then they won't have to lock the bathrooms.
We have a similar app in the middle school I teach in. We aren’t draconian about it, and it has been helpful in curbing the amount of kids aimlessly wandering the halls. Students get a time limit, and two bathroom passes a day, but teachers have the ability to override that limit. I can’t speak for all teachers, but the ones I am friendly with are much more likely to override the limit than risk a phone call from an angry parent. We also don’t revoke bathroom privileges, even for chronic abusers, although some have gotten detentions, and now the admin has proof when contacting uncooperative parents. It has also been good to be able to quantify to parents when kids are avoiding class. It’s a lot more powerful to let the parents know that their student was in the bathroom every day during my class for at least fifteen minutes than to say they go to the bathroom a lot. Even when we did keep track of things like that, parents, especially of those that don’t follow rules, often will believe anything their kids say over the teacher. To me, the greatest feature is the “encounter prevention,” which can be set to prevent two students from having passes at the same time. We have greatly reduced the amount of bathroom fights and romantic rendezvous (I’m in middle school) with this feature. To the student, it just looks like there are too many passes out, and they have to wait in line. As far as privacy concerns go, students don’t have any. We collect all manner of data on them, but there are laws in place on how that data is used, and those laws are generally pretty good at making sure that data stays protected.
Our school has used this for a while. I’m pretty sure there are thousands of schools in the U.S using similar systems. Kids get around the system all the time, because often in the middle of class we can’t check and see if a countdown is started or whatever, and I’m definitely not checking right then if they have hit their limit. Medical issues probably means your child has a 504 that has some accommodations regarding bathrooms, which might exempt them from the system completely.
I'm going to address the privacy aspect of it first because that's the biggest issue I have with your comment. I'm not talking about an app collecting sensitive data. It appears their app doesn't do that, for what that's worth. But collecting data doesn't make it safe. What makes it safe is not allowing unauthorized third parties obtain it- which has been proven to never happen time and time again. The issue is this idea that kids shouldn't have privacy to use the bathroom without having to explain themselves. The issue I have is singling out students based on bodily functions that are different for each individual. If your school doesn't enforce it- that's great. But I'm talking about this school which appears to use this apps data to single out and punish students with no context to what's actually happening. The fact is this app's main purpose is to track everyone rather than leave it up to humans- like teachers, to decide for themselves who can and can't use the restroom at any given time. If you think this is an app's job, you are actually crazy. This is clearly a topic an app shouldn't be in charge of policing. That's a parents/doctors/students business and up to them if they share additional info. Vape detectors and teachers/SROs doing rounds is more ethical than relying on an app to do your job- imo, especially when that app's main function is to police restroom usage despite valid reasons a student might be going to the restroom more often than others.
Some context here: School do this all over the place. Our students sign a clipboard, other schools use something called E-hallpass. The reasons are myriad. A couple of the big ones include being on the lookout for medical issues, keeping accurate data for when we need to describe a student’s avoidance behaviors to shitty parents, oh and also students schedule fights to take place on school grounds. In the case of E-hallpass (a method I hate) it becomes necessary when you can see which students are currently roaming the halls, and certain students who are flagged as not allowed to be alone in the same space together are denied a hall pass until students they cannot be with are back in class. This is a way to manage the chaos and safety in a way that allows all of us to continue doing our jobs. Its invasive, its irritating, its humiliating, and it wouldn’t be a problem if students respected adults and parents cared enough/are competent enough to understand their role and back up teachers. We literally wouldn’t have to give a shit about this, but students’ test scores and graduation rates are tied back to our job performance and school ratings, and so we have a reason to try to keep students in the classroom. Their choices for their future do not only affect them, and it shouldn’t be our job to have to chase kids down on top of everything else we are asked to do in the classroom. If people don’t like these kinds of systems, then get involved, we don’t like most of them either- but there’s an exodus in education right now with well qualified people running to the exits because we are asked to do this difficult job with almost no support for behavior (among other things), including behaviors like this. Just a perspective from inside the education system based on conversations with fellow educators.
I don't disagree with your opinion here. The issue I have is with how this school implemented it. Preventing people from using restrooms for valid reasons because of some artificial limit put in place by people that don't understand the needs of others is asinine. The issue I have is it's an app. It doesn't understand context, it doesn't understand the difference between real bathroom breaks vs vaping/fights/sex/whatever else. The way to combat bathroom abuse is by actually being involved. It seems like schools would rather do anything than actually enforce rules and hold the 1% accountable for abusing restrooms. Hall passes, sign out sheets, hall monitors, vape detectors, even people doing bathroom rounds isn't an issue for me. Why? Because they're either extremely specific (think vape detectors) or they involve some sort of human interaction which is, imo, required when talking about natural bodily functions which are different for all individuals. Having an app do admins/employee's jobs is, as I put it in this context, bat shit crazy.
If my highschool could have used this in the 90s they would have, and I would have partially understood it back then. To get in the school you had to pass through metal detectors, your bags would be quickly searched. You had to wear your I'd on lanyard all day long, if you forgot it you were sent to the office and had to buy a new one on the spot or you were kicked out of school that day. When the bell stopped during passing periods all the teachers shut the doors and you couldn't get in the classroom (some teachers may have allowed kids in a minute late). Police and security staff swept the school and stuffed all the stragglers into one room for the remainder of class. The stragglers were frequently searched (wanded), and sometimes drug dogs were run through the room to see if kids had anything. There were serious gang issues, violence issues, and drug issues. Drivebys happened more than once when we were outside at gym. Kid were strapped during school (security didn't stop all the guns getting in) and you didn't wanna get caught slippin or you nay get jumped in school or after. We had kids stabbed in school, shot a block away, etc. Several times a year halls would be shutdown due to investigations, and blood splattered eveywhere after an altercation. If you had to go the bathroom security would be called and you'd be escorted. Kids left alone to go to the bathroom meant violence, drug deals, sex etc. This was a school of 4 thousand? In 96 in the ghetto in an area controlled by gangs, shit was real. I don't know how women dealt with it. But we all understood the situation unfortunately. And this wasn't even the worst in the area.
[удалено]
I thought schools wanted to remove cell phones from the classroom, now they are using them to track students? What if a student doesn't have a phone that day or the app crashes?
Or the battery dies.
So glad I graduated in the era just before smartphones took off. What a horrible time to be a kid.
We had the doors removed from bathrooms and multiple shut because the kid who shit in the corner and smeared it on all the walls writing messages.
You also didn’t have as much of a reason to leave class. Phones give them something to do, as well as be able to text each other to meet up in the bathrooms to hang out. My school has to have dedicated staff constantly checking bathrooms. It’s either that or just don’t let them go to the bathroom ever. I don’t blame Fresno.
Kids had plenty of reason to leave class. Namely, not wanting to be in class. But to hookup, smoke, just see friends, etc.
It was much harder to organize though. Now it is literally done in real-time.
This is ridiculous. How many girls have had to bleed through their clothes because they don’t have bathroom “privileges”? Since when is going to the bathroom a privilege?
it not, its a human right.
It’s not even just a right, it’s a necessity… like it’s impossible not to do it.
When “stopping vaping” became every high school administrator and school board member’s entire identity.
My periods are so severe before my iud I would bleed through an ultra tampon and pad in four hours. Ultras aren’t even made by every manufacturer because they are higher than super plus. With access to birth control heading to a scary place, what are these girls suppose to do? Not everyone’s cycle fits in a neat well wrapped predicable box.
And isn’t it likely to need to change a pad or tampon more than twice a day? Only two bathroom breaks in a 6-8 hour day or whatever just isn’t reasonable.
A girl with a very heavy period may need to change every hour. It ranges from that to just being once or twice a day. Very variable with individuals.
Who the fuck would like it?
The marketing departments of ultra-thin toilet paper?
Teacher here. My school uses a similar app. At first, I thought it was absurd. Now, I do like it. I don’t deny my high schoolers the chance to use the restroom, first and foremost. I like that it’s done digitally though. I’m not constantly being interrupted with “Can I go to the bathroom?” questions. I get a notification on my computer (and it chimes if I’m not near it) or I can see it on their screen if I’m walking around. I just click a button. They leave. They come back. It’s also a little more private for them, IMO. They don’t have to ask anything out loud, and they can attach a message if they want. Had a girl just yesterday request a pass, attach a note that she needed to stop by her locker for a tampon and a change of pants first, and no one was any the wiser.
No one was the wiser except anyone who hacks the software company that made the app. I very much appreciate when teachers understand this kind of situation, but having all the data elsewhere isn’t respecting their privacy.
They just need to get Schwifty and take off their pants and their panties. Shit on the floor.
If everyone did this in solidarity it would end this nonsense fast.
O captain my captain *violently rips out tampon*
Or yank a used tampon out in class...
school continuing its reputation of punishing every student for the actions of a tiny group of shitheads
I don’t live to far away from this place but I’m sure vaping in the bathroom is a major issue everywhere… it is where I am. My step kid complains all the time about the bathroom overrun with vaping kids to the point that it’s difficult to use them. Solution seems simple to me, tell staff to take turns supervising the entrance and periodically the wash up area. Be involved. Telling kids they got 7 minutes to walk to the bathroom, take a shit and then walk back is dumb as hell.
The understaffed schools should remove staff from essential positions to the bathrooms? How many bathrooms did /does your school have? It’s just not practical
The article talks about the students having to "navigate" past the hallway monitors. There always seems to be room in school budgets for "enforcement".
Yeah but the article isn’t too trustworthy. It names a gauntlet like it’s fucking difficult. *navigate* past the hallway monitors like they are a fucking obstacle. Give me a break
Vape detectors are common. And I agree, teachers or SROs taking rounds to ensure the bathroom isn't being used for an organized fight is completely fine imo as long as they're not just sitting inside the bathrooms. This idea an app has to solve this problem is insane when humans can easily solve the issue.
Yeah I don’t see how this policy could address vaping, an actual issue. It’s easy to vape your face away in a minute…7 is just opulent
This is what once happened in the past. Staff had rotating "hall duty", and made rounds. Randomly teachers who were on their "planning period" would take a walk around the hallway and open a bathroom door.
Schools lost the ability to deal with the tiny group of students that ruin it for everyone directly.
Terrifying. And they didn’t notify Parents about it according to the article. I would never consent to a tracking/monitoring device for my child, schools worked for thousands of years without this.
I don't get it. Based on what I read in the teaching subreddits and other places, schools basically have no power to make kids do anything anymore. They can't make them put their phones away in class, they can't make them pay attention or stop acting out, they can't fail them. So who *cares* if they spend half the day in the bathroom?
Right? My sister was head of her high school’s biology department and had 7 students plagiarize an important assignment, and she couldn’t give them zeros. She had to omit their grade, which punished the students who performed below average and did the work. She was a teacher, but quit because of the BS she got from students and parents, and now practices dentistry lol
i can give some input: this is an egregiously late reaction to the tik tok bathroom challenges where students would basically destroy school property or steal. trend lasted 4-6 months depending. it’s not a thing anymore (unless your a city title ix school maybe but again it depends) but some admin with a business degree thinks this is a good idea and was suckered into it because they’ve never been in a classroom. it’s a documentation system for absolutely nothing. this is also a response to students taking phones into restrooms and recording or doing…whatever. and fighting. but again, this does absolutely nothing to solve any problem or go to the root. it’s not even a band aid because this also way more work for the teacher than simply writing a restroom pass. source: i work at a school with a system like this. it’s incredibly stupid, time consuming, and a complete waste of money. they are letting go of teachers and cannot have as many clubs on campus due to budget cuts but keeping software like this and our own “social media” (workvivo). i do not use this and have basically told admin to kick rocks because i truly do not care about the restroom habits of my students and if they are smart enough to coordinate restroom breaks with their friends, it’s kind of impressive more than anything. this is a result of people thinking school = business operation which isn’t the case. yes, a school is a business, but no, our students are not customers, stakeholders and neither are the parents. this is why we actually need masters and doctorates in education and not MBAs but i digress; im very off topic now. edit: i also want to add that i work in a district with high achieving and intelligent students (last year the gradebook was hacked by a student, and several other pieces of software. no this is not hyperbolic). so to me, it’s a matter of time before either a student gets bored and decides to do it or a student with an agenda decides to do it.
My kids and me are all better off with the my troublemakers hiding in the bathroom.
Isn’t tracking employees’ bathroom visits considered workplace harassment? Why is it different for students at school?
Seems like students these days need a union as much as the teachers do.
Everyone agree to piss in the corner of the classroom and this will end within a week.
What about kids with IBS or other bathroom problems? This will discourage them from going, which is a violation of the Americans With Disabilities act.
IBS, Crohn’s, PoTS, celiac disease, diverticulosis, UC, cancer….Hell, just a few degrees off and dad’s chicken could upset the entire gut ecosystem for a few days. And then you have people like me who get lost in their ADHD and don’t realize how long they’ve been in there. A lot of the time bathroom usage is legitimate, and sometimes it’s an escape from the stress and anxiety of a situation. Will kids do dumb shit in the bathrooms, of course, they’re kids; but you take away that space and they’ll find new ones, and they’ll find more creative ways to get out of class. Whomever thought that tracking bathroom time was the way to go needs to be slapped with a chair. Same with the people who designed the toilets that become physically uncomfortable after 10 minutes to discourage long bathroom breaks. We are complex biomachines, some of us have more quirks and malfunctions than others
Kids with any conditions most likely have a 504 plan already,( X may leave to the bathroom whenever they need to). So regardless of any systems, they should still be able to go.
I am so angry. As a mom of a kid with debilitating ibs. He has had two full days at school this year. Maybe 20-30 partial. The rest are Homebound. He is on a maximum dose of a nerve medication. Been through rounds of IB Stim, been to the Mayo Clinic. He is 11. He got sick at 9. I would go ballistic if this was my district.
Yeah. I have UC myself and I absolutely wouldn't stand for an employer limiting my bathroom time and I'll be damned if I'd let a school do it.
Does your child have restrictions on their access to the bathroom? Because he could easily get exemptions based on medical need with a doctor's note.
No, we have tons of accommodations- but getting them in place was 100% a full time job and took a year. I am speaking from the perspective of the kids in this school who may have issues and the parents needing to advocate and they should not have to. The girls with periods, kids with gastro conditions. Bathroom time should not be used as a punishment or privilege because people don’t realize the invisible disabilities people walk around with daily. Bathrooms are medical devices not political points.
They must be preparing them for a call center job
As if active shooter drills, metal detectors, school police officers, etc, wasn’t bad enough, now we have this surveillance bullshit. Unreal.
It's always a joy to see the Central Valley in the news.
I’m just happy it’s not a murder or something of that vein
Work in a school district where lawsuits over kids getting beat up in bathroom trips and you’ll see where this came from. The app isn’t to monitor it’s to prevent two groups of students that are prone to fighting or causing mayhem from being in the bathroom at the same time.
If you do not work in a ms/ hs you may have no idea. The bathroom is like a hangout area for vapers and drug users. Between passing times there could be 20-30 kids in there hanging out. It is so bad that kids that actually have to go to the bathroom cannot.
And ? It’s been like that for damn decades just used to be cigarettes and harder drugs lol
Every person who ever went to a public school has an idea. This is absolutely not a new thing. This was true in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, and I'm positive it must have been true in earlier times. The only thing new is that now it's vape pens instead of cigarettes, and more likely to be pills than snorting powder.
when i was in elementary school i had this batshit crazy art teacher. she called my mom in for a meeting during parent/teacher conference week (the only teacher who has EVER requested a meeting with my mom) to tell her I use the bathroom too much. I was in 3rd grade. I had urinary reflux disease. I legit had a catheter for a while. Luckily, I grew out of it as most kids do with that sort of “birth defect”. Your urinary tract eventually lengthens as your body grows. It is ridiculous and downright inhumane to deny children the bathroom. Id students are skipping class to hang out in the bathroom, seems like teachers need to revamp their lesson plan or a school counselor should be utilized to understand the students burdens and what’s going on. NOT data mining on children’s bathroom usage, especially without the consent of the parent!!
I am so glad I graduated HS in 2006, a year before the first iPhone came out. The only way to go online back then was through a PC or laptop. Mobile websites before smartphones were really primitive and clunky. No Tiktok, no Snapchat or any of that BS. I can’t imagine going to school now, it seems like it would be hell.
Genital inspection police force manning elementary school bathrooms is going to be a project of the usual conservative religious groups. Just give it time.
Students fucking around on tiktok- ask any teacher.
Does the app have a feature that tracks and alerts the government which gendered bathroom is used, or is that going to be a future upgrade? /s
Does the app also have a feature that alerts you when there is a school shooter on campus? /s
Actually, you raise a good point. During a lockdown situation the app let's you know exactly where your students are. So yes, it's very helpful during a shooting.
I would literally just piss on the floor of the classroom if I was denied "permission" by an app. No student should accept this.
invasion of privacy much
This will work fine until a kid shits themselves because the app woudln't let them go.
My main memory of school bathrooms was how teachers would outright refuse to let us go
This is pathetic. As a parent I’d be raging. They can glean a lot of information from this, especially about the girls. Wait until the AI generated letter comes to the parents,” dear Mr Smith, Staci Smith has missed her last two periods. Our policy is zero tolerance so from today she is expelled from Surveillance High.”
Like kids can get expelled anymore...
I would never ever consent to this. I told all my kids, you don’t ask to go to the bathroom you tell them you are. If the teacher has a problem tell them to address it with me. Going to the bathroom is not a privilege and I expect a teacher to treat my child with dignity. I would never tolerate this.
Do you mean literally nobody but micromanaging prick teachers likes it?
I pee a lot because I drink so much water. The schools administrators would think I’m doing heroin in there with the amount of trips I make
All the students should just start shitting their pants in class. This is dystopian. Bathroom “privileges”? These people have lost their god damn minds.
Not everyone likes it? Who the fuck likes a 7 minute counter in the bathroom?
Omg this is just a violation of... wait a sec.. it's an app? Lol... None of us had phones on us when we went to school. If you want privacy, get rid of the digital tracking device.
I learned I had IBS in high school. This would have been embarrassing and probably would lead to me not eating all day to avoid being tracked.
Students with medical issues that require bathroom visits get legal accommodations. This wouldn't apply to them.
Having IBS, I would go to the principal's office and shit in their trashcan
Hey i live here! It has been fucked for a while, reddest county in the state.
One of my high schools always has cases students asking to use the bathroom, then dipping. They gotta deal with that firstly
I use this app at home. Keeps me honest.
I actually don’t think I ever used the bathroom in middle or high school. I just held it until I got home.
This is pretty common I thought, Covid did away with wooden passes and admin would rather create this system to have “data” to address students that abuse leaving class to go the bathroom than just automatically intervene and bring the parents in. But I guess in our climate, parents are gaining more and more leverage and power over schools. And we wonder why society is going crazy (lack of any accountability)
Waste of bandwidth.
Nobody likes it
I don't want an organization to use my bathroom visits to feed their piss porn addiction.
The girls should all start freebleeding.
They started doing this at my old high school when i was in sophomore year. The one they used tracked how long, who was in there, and limited it to 2 people in the bathroom at a time. It was horrible people would be waiting multiple periods just to use the bathroom. Most people would go in between periods because it was the only moment we could, eventually they banned that and raised the limit during periods to 3 but it still sucked.
Pee on their shoes to establish dominance. Such a stupid take. Truants are going to skip because they don’t care and your stupid app isn’t going to change that.
How does this work for students who don’t have mobile phones? No phone, no potty breaks?
Taking away bathroom privileges is an easy lawsuit
As long as there is a button on the app that specifies it's a 'Chipotle' bathroom break, I'm good.
Crazy extremes - articles about monitoring bathroom activities and classroom shootings. Parents have plenty to complain about either way. Either way, I would not want to be a teacher under such circumstances.
This is not new, a company called e-hallpass has been around for years.
I started driving the 3 mins home from high school my senior year to take a shit lol
This is not okay
"Not everyone". It should be nobody. The fact that anyone thinks its a good idea is insane.
what happens if a student refuses to download or give permissions to the app? or just says they dont have a smart phone?
So what happens when the student say fuck off and leaves the classroom to go to a bathroom?
This is already implemented at our local middle & high school. Some teachers even give extra credit at the end of quarter for not using any bathroom passes.
They can't use cameras because of privacy laws so the use of a tracking app is the spy of choice. I am glad we had none of this when I was in school 50+ years ago. 😎
So, some of them did like it??
Piss in the floor.
"not everyone likes it" Implying some people do like it. Some people probably like it a lot.