Officials and police in Anaheim, who have had enough of school students skipping classes habitually have turned to GPS devices in order to ensure that these children come to class. The Anaheim Union High School District became first of its kind in California last week when it implemented a six week long pilot program to test the implementation of GPS in schools. This model mandates those students of the seventh and eighth grades in the school who have been absent for more than four days without an excuse to carry around cellphone sized GPS devices manually. These devices give these children an automated phone call on the mornings of each of their working days to remind them that they need to get to their classes. It also requires these students to enter a code into the device five times a day to track their locations; this is done at the time of leaving home for school, the time when they arrive at school, at their lunch time, at the time of leaving school for home and at 8 p.m. in the night.
Adult coaches have also been assigned to these students to monitor their progress by calling them at least three times a week and to help them with suggesting effective methods to be able to get to the class on time. This is opted for by both the parents and the students themselves as missing a lot of classes without an excuse could lead to anything from continuation school to a penalty up to potentially being sent to juvenile hall. According to the authorities, the idea behind the move is not to impose it as a punishment, but to help inculcate punctuality and regularity towards studies in these children. The funding for the project is being handled by a state grant.
