Glendale, California, schools hire the firm 'Geo Listening' to monitor students' public posts on social media.

. . . clip

Los Angeles (CNN) -- A suburban Los Angeles school district is now looking at the public postings on social media by middle and high school students, searching for possible violence, drug use, bullying, truancy and suicidal threats.

The district in Glendale, California, is paying $40,500 to a firm to monitor and report on 14,000 middle and high school students' posts on Twitter, Facebook and other social media for one year.

Though critics liken the monitoring to government stalking, school officials and their contractor say the purpose is student safety.

As classes began this fall, the district awarded the contract after it earlier paid the firm, Geo Listening, $5,000 last spring to conduct a pilot project monitoring 9,000 students at three high schools and a middle school. Among the results was a successful intervention with a student "who was speaking of ending his life" on his social media, said Chris Frydrych, CEO of the firm.         . . .clip   

Chris Frydrych

Founder at Geo Listening

Greater Los Angeles Area 

Education Management

Turn on your always monitoring service

It’s a fact.  Your students are posting to social networks right from your campus.   Due to the pervasive use of mobile devices and social networks, the parents, staff and the school administrators responsible for these students must be more effective in processing this information.

Every day, there are posts about vandalism, crime, drugs, and all types of bullying from children who hope someone is listening. The volume of these posts is so overwhelming that it would be nearly impossible for schools – on their own- to efficiently filter through and take effective action. Geo Listening is an always monitoring service of all public posts on social networks that originate from your school campuses.

. . .clip

Frydrych's firm scours the social media postings of Glendale students aged 13 and older -- the age at which parental permission isn't required for the school's contracted monitoring -- and sends a daily report to principals on which students' comments could be causes for concern, Frydrych said.

The company won't disclose its methods and practices in gathering the students' messages, but it does use key words in its searches. The firm also didn't disclose how it confirms the youths are indeed students of the district.

To do the work, Frydrych employs no more than 10 full-time staffers -- as well as "a larger portion" of contract workers across the globe who labor a maximum of four hours a day because "the content they read is so dark and heavy," Frydrych said.  . . .clip

Geo Listening also monitors whether students are talking about drug use, cutting class or violence. The firm even ascertains whether pupils are using their smartphone during class time, Frydrych said.

While critics say the Glendale schools' contract is an invasion of privacy, Frydrych said his firm helps schools bridge a digital-age communications "chasm."

"Parents and school district personnel -- they are not able to effectively listen to the conversation where it's happening now," Frydrych said. "The notion about talking in class is about as old-fashioned as a Studebaker, no offense to the makers of the car."

California to stop towing unlicensed drivers, mainly due to ‘illegal immigrants’ need a car and don’t have the money.

Thousands of cars are towed each year in the state under those circumstances,

ESCONDIDO, California (AP) — Delfino Aldama was fixing a customer’s brakes this month when his smartphone chimed with a text message that tipped him to a police checkpoint more than an hour before officers began stopping motorists. The self-employed auto mechanic frantically called friends with the location and drove an alternate route home.

The Mexico native had reason to be alarmed: He does not have a driver’s license because he is in the United States illegally, and it would cost about $1,400 to get his Nissan Frontier pickup back from the towing company if it got confiscated at the checkpoint. He has breathed a little easier since he began getting blast text messages two years ago from activists who scour streets to find checkpoints as they are being set up.

The cat-and-mouse game ends Jan. 1 when a new law takes effect inCalifornia to prohibit police from impounding cars at sobriety checkpoints if a motorist’s only offense is being an unlicensed driver. Thousands of cars are towed each year in the state under those circumstances, hitting pocketbooks of illegal immigrantsespecially hard.

When Aldama’s 1992 Honda Civic was towed from a checkpoint years ago, he quit his job frying chickens at a fast-food restaurant because he had no way to make the 40-mile (65-kilometer) round trip to work. He abandoned the car rather than pay about $1,200 in fees.

“A car is a necessity, it’s not a luxury,” said the 35-year-old Aldama, who lives in Escondido with his wife, who is a legal resident, and their 5-year-old son, a U.S. citizen.

Assemblyman Gil Cedillo, a Los Angeles Democrat who tried unsuccessfully to restore driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants after California revoked the privilege in 1993, said he introduced the bill to ban towing after learning the notoriously corrupt city of Bell raked in big fees from unlicensed drivers at checkpoints.More at Source

‘One Bill Gil’ Cedillo and
the Axis of Weasels

September 5, 2003 — A grinning former MEChA member and vehement Mexican reconquista State Senator “One Bill Gil” Cedillo holds the freshly signed illegal alien driver’s license bill (SB60) as a gleeful radical pest Assemblyman Fabian Nunez looks on. Seated is the pandering failed Governor Gray Davis, a traitor who was successfully recalled on October 7, 2003  (the first Calif. Governor in history to be removed — he was replaced by actor Arnold Schwarzenegger).Mayor James ‘L.A. is a Mexican City’ Hahn, City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo, andrabid reconquista Antonio Villaraigosa are in the background. SB60 was eventually repealed in December, 2003, but the evil Cedillo vowed to bring it back…. and he did just that in February, 2004 as SB1160. He has since said that he will keep pushing to reward pesky criminal invaders until the day he expires.

DREAM Act bill would have most impact in California, Texas

DREAM Act bill could provide legal status for some young illegal immigrants.

 

Immigrants in Texas and California would be the biggest winners if Congress and President Barack Obama support legislation allowing young illegal immigrants to acquire U.S. legal status based on education and military service, according to a study released last week.

Bill Text
111th Congress (2009-2010)
H.R.1751.IH

Bill Summary & Status
111th Congress (2009 – 2010)
H.R.4920

Bill Summary & Status
111th Congress (2009 – 2010)
S.729

The analysis by the Migration Policy Institute, a nonprofit group that researches immigration issues, concluded that the bill introduced last year could put approximately 2.1 million youth and young adults on a potential path to citizenship.
The institute estimated that only 38 percent of potential beneficiaries — 825,000 people — would likely obtain permanent legal status through the education and military routes set out in the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act, or DREAM Act.
“Many potential DREAM Act beneficiaries would face difficulties in meeting the legislation’s higher education or military service requirements,” said Margie McHugh, co-author of the study. Inability to pay college tuition and problems with English proficiency would reduce the number of potential beneficiaries, she said.
California would have the most potential beneficiaries with 553,000 youngsters theoretically able to meet the requirements, the report said.  Texas would come in second, with just over 250,000 possible beneficiaries, followed by Florida with 192,000, New York with 146,000 and Arizona, with 114,000.
The Migration Policy Institute report concludes that the DREAM Act would have a wide reach.more