Durham Public Schools board members addressed urgent calls for action on gun violence and student safety at their work session, with Board Chair Bettina Umstead opening the meeting to acknowledge a student killed in a shooting near Hillside High School. Umstead criticized the state legislature for prioritizing a "Parents Bill of Rights" instead of addressing gun violence and mental health support. Board Member Fayodaris, a parent of Hillside students, emotionally shared that 15 young people she knows have been affected by gun violence and called for community solidarity with affected families. Students had recently presented solutions requesting gun safety programs with free locks, mental health support, job training, and after-school programs.
The board also heard serious privacy concerns about Gaggle, surveillance software launched district-wide in January that monitors student devices for self-harm and violence risk. Parent Ron Baron urged the board to pause the program after his non-binary child was flagged and outed to an unsupportive religious family when a counselor shared the full Gaggle report with the family. According to the ACLU, disclosing a student's sexual orientation or gender identity to parents is illegal. Former teacher Jenny Cauldron and Anne Sakawi Hemstreet from Rainbow Collective for Change warned the software risks outing LGBTQ students. While board members acknowledged Gaggle has identified students in crisis, multiple members expressed concern about privacy invasion, the risk of outing vulnerable students, potential discipline disparities, and the uncompensated burden on educators responding to alerts around the clock. Millicent Rogers asked to revisit Gaggle in May before contract renewal on June 30.
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