Some Kansas City, Kansas, teachers on Tuesday told the school board they oppose a proposal to add cameras in classrooms districtwide, worried about privacy and being constantly under surveillance in a heightened political environment.
“I do not teach or promote racial theories, gender views, religious views or political views. I personally believe these issues are for the parents of the students,” kindergarten teacher Shalesha Parson told the board. “Teachers under audio and video scrutiny are not the answer. I spoke with several teachers, and we do not want to teach in a fishbowl. This tells us that we are not valued, trusted or respected as educators.
“It’s a huge invasion of privacy for teachers and students.”
Teachers also worry that the plan would mean more students would be watching livestreamed or recorded lessons rather than learning in person, which they fear would harm children’s education. District officials say the proposal would make it easier to livestream and record lessons amid staff shortages.
“It is your duty to put a teacher in front of every student, not just a screen,” Wyandotte High School teacher Carolyn Hummel told the board. “Our most at-risk students need more teachers, not less.”
On Tuesday, the school board reviewed the proposal to spend more than $6.7 million to add 1,600 cameras, using federal COVID-19 relief dollars provided to schools to address the pandemic’s effects. The board voted to hold a public meeting, both in person and virtually, to allow the community to provide input before making any decisions. The date for the meeting has not yet been set.
The proposal says teachers could use the cameras to livestream and record lessons, which could be shared with students who are absent. And students in classrooms where the district has been forced to hire long-term subs, because of staffing shortages, could then watch the live lessons from classrooms that have qualified teachers.
Unable to fill enough teaching positions at the start of this year, the KCK district partnered with a company to hire some virtual teachers from out of state. They livestream lessons to classrooms of students on their computers, while a staff member watches the kids in person.
It’s just one of the many examples across the metro area of how districts have worked to educate students despite severe staffing shortages. Teachers have cited increased workloads, added stress, low pay and the tense political rhetoric around schools as reasons for considering leaving the profession. In recent years, schools have played host to debates on heated political issues, such as the teaching of race and gender identity, book banning and more.
“We can successfully run our schools and improve student achievement without cameras in the classroom,” Parson said. “We cannot run our schools with a bunch of empty classrooms and cameras when students and staff leave.”
Superintendent Anna Stubblefield said district leaders have been discussing adding classroom cameras for years, and last year the teachers union was included in discussions about what cameras could be used for. While safety concerns were part of initial conversations, Stubblefield said that the latest proposal is focused on recording lessons for academic purposes, not security.
She said some classrooms already have cameras for a variety of reasons, including necessity during the pandemic as teachers taught students in person and online. But this proposal would add cameras in classes districtwide.
Amid community concerns over transparency, board member Wanda Kay Paige said teachers, students and community members need an opportunity to speak on the issue, and pushed for the board to schedule a meeting for it.
Member Rachel Russell said that, “As a newly elected board member, this item caught me completely off guard, as it did many members of our staff and community. It is my strongest belief that decisions like these should solicit intentional feedback from all impacted stakeholders. Unfortunately this does not appear to be the case.”
She also addressed concerns that the cameras could create a less welcoming environment, where students feel policed. She argued that students already enter schools and “walk through a metal detector every day. And now cameras? When do our children get an opportunity to be a kid that goes to a world-class facility. This proposal indeed gets us closer to the ideology that already exists that our students are walking into prisons.”
Stubblefield said that she would like to survey high school students on the issue to gather their feedback.
The Wyandotte High School Parent Teacher Student Association has argued that the proposal would be a “misuse” of resources, “when our students and staff feel starved for them.”
“We do not believe that it’s money well spent and the efforts will not keep us any safer or enhance the educational experience,” the PTSA said in an email to The Star. “… Imagine what the Wyandotte cluster of schools could do with $6 million! We could get alarms on all 27 of the entrances to our high school. We could get more counseling services to prevent incidents. We could invest in our school culture so students feel committed to being active at school.”
Teachers are pushing for the district to explain what policies could be adopted if cameras were installed, to ensure that students have privacy, the videos are not inappropriately shared and that classroom education is not under constant scrutiny.
Dom DeRosa, president of the National Education Association of KCK, said teachers want assurances that recordings would not be used as part of the evaluation process for educators, putting further strain on them.
“We recognize that there are benefits that can be derived from the use of video cameras,” he said. “We also must recognize that it comes equipped with the potential for abuse. What we want to do is prevent the unforeseen consequences. There are serious privacy concerns that address students and staff that must be addressed.”
Hummel said she is worried that installing cameras would mean an expansion of virtual learning in the district. “We tried that for a year, and look what it did to our learners,” she said. “They’re more disengaged than they’ve ever been.”
She said there must be other solutions, as students need additional, in-person support.
Teacher Barbara Williams argued, “Our teachers and administrators are truly working at capacity right now. Truly doing their best, and they’ve been given a lot. Please don’t add to their burden. They don’t need anything else on their plates.”
