Keeping our kids safe... by treating them like criminals?

What if your children were under constant Government surveillance? Students already have a hard time expressing themselves... knowing that their principal is reading every word they write online, even when they aren't in school, would make it nearly impossible for them to act like individuals.

The Glendale School District has hired the firm Geo Listening to read every single social media post made by the 13,500 Glendale district students, no matter where or when they make them. The schools will be following students outside of school grounds and onto the internet by creating a 24/7 surveillance network. Schools district officials claim that they are keeping students safe by constantly monitoring them. Instead, they're creating a literal "nanny state". Are we okay with treating our children like criminals when they haven't even committed a crime?

And the taxpayers are footing the bill!

This system isn't free. The Glendale school system isn't privately owned. This means that Glendale is using taxpayer money to pay for the cost of spying on its students. The California Department of Education declared a Financial Emergency at the end of 2010, and now Glendale wants to use almost Fifty-Thousand dollars to monitor its student when they aren't even at school!

What could be worse then that? Well, in 2012, Glendale's Academic Performance Index fell from the previous year! This money could be spent helping students learn in the classroom instead of making them feel like prisoners at home.

If we don't act now, this will spread.

Glendale's monitoring system hasn't even gone into effect and already other schools in the area are considering it. The neighboring Burbank school district has already expressed interest in Glendale's surveillance policy. If we let this happen in Southern California, it won't be long until it spreads across the country!

Other US school districts have already tried it: in 2010, a Federal Judge told the Lower Marion school district in Pennsylvania that it was illegal to spy on students using school-issued laptops.

We're already furious at the US Government for spying on adults. Let's make sure that our children don't grow up thinking that 24/7 surveillance is normal!