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Phone Robots who nab kids that cut class
interesting article...can you guys say big brother?
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Some teens call it Robocop, others dub it The Skipatron. But thanks to the hot new school phone message system that tells parents if kids have skipped class, they're so busted.
Caught between growing calls for accountability and cuts to office staff, schools are turning to technology to help keep students on their radar.
The hottest tools in the kit, from Scotland to Scarborough, are computer programs that phone the parents of students who missed class and deliver an incriminating recorded message.
"I have the most hated voice in North America," laughs Mark Miller, who can be heard on the phone from more than 2,000 schools across North America.
Miller is a Markham computer whiz and one of five partners in SynreVoice Technologies Inc.
The company, which developed the truancy software almost 10 years ago, has sold the system from Florida to Michigan, Vancouver to Charlottetown, including 30 schools across Toronto.
"This is a message from --- School: A student in your household in Grade ---, named ---, was absent Feb. 21 in periods --- and ---. Please call the school or send a note to provide an explanation," the recorded voice says.
"If you nip skipping early, it can have a positive effect on the dropout rate," says Miller, whose company also helps people pay parking tickets over the phone. "And with schools facing budget cuts, secretaries don't have the time to make the calls themselves."
The system works this way: Attendance is taken by the teacher on a standardized form, which is then scanned into the school's computer, which in turn activates the automatic phone calls.
Schools around the world are using other innovative ways to clamp down on truancy. Parents in Britain, Detroit and California can be fined if they let their kids play hooky, while in Philadelphia, a fancy student swipe card triggers a siren when a skip artist tries to sign back in.
Principals across Halton Region now e-mail parents at work to report Johnny has gone AWOL again, after the public school board bought the system, also by SynreVoice, for every high school. It's also used at the Catholic board in Dufferin-Peel, the public board in Sudbury and, as of this week, at public schools in Vancouver.
This microchip can even get kids out of bed.
Several Michigan schools fed up with late arrivals ordered the company's "Breakfast Club" software, which makes early-morning recorded wake-up calls to students.
But SynreVoice is not the only company dreaming up Big Brother-style surveillance for schools.
DAE Consulting of Claremont, in Durham Region, has developed a similar telephone program called Truancy Tracking that is in place at 50 schools across the Greater Toronto Area, said owner Dave Elrick.
And it is testing an even fancier spy gizmo at Cedarbrae Collegiate, where vice-principal Dave Leggett patrols the halls with a pocket Casio computer that can instantly call up the photo and timetable of every student he encounters lounging at the lockers during class, as well as their attendance record.
The system, not unlike the network police officers use to check your driving record, works like a charm, he says.
But it's not perfect.
Lester B. Pearson Collegiate in Scarborough accidentally programmed the calls one night to start at 4.30 a.m. — not p.m. — which principal Christopher Usih says "wasn't too popular with parents."
"It's not very accurate, either," grumbles Daniel, 17, a Grade 12 student at Northern Secondary School who says the machine mispronounces his name when it calls — adding an unexplained French accent — and kept calling about a course he had already dropped.
But the schools say it works.
At Northern Secondary, principal Bob Milne introduced the $5,000 SynreVoice system last month and has already seen a 30 per cent drop in missed classes — to 200 a day from 300 — in just three weeks.
"We want to catch kids early, before skipping becomes a chronic problem," he says. "Already 90 per cent of the Grade 9s we call have stopped skipping almost instantaneously."
Not surprisingly, some students are fighting back.
Mark Miller estimates at least one in five students erases the message before their parents get home, but schools keep a record of the attempted calls nonetheless.
"The system does cut down on skipping as long as the parents care, although some parents don't," says Tom Jutkovic, vice-principal of Monarch Park Collegiate. "Kids will get away with what they want to get away with, and it's the duty of the school to let the families know."
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its so gay. then when i go the next day i get this little yellow slip and im supposed to go to the office and explain the absence but i dont ;/
