A 15-year-old girl was allegedly forced to wear an ankle tracking monitor at a public school in Washington state for purposes of “COVID segregation,” The Post Millennial reports.
Both vaccinated and unvaccinated students were required to wear the ankle monitor in order to participate in team sports in Eatonville High School.
A mother spoke anonymously to The Post Millennial and explained that her daughter was at a practice for the public school’s volleyball team.
She received a text message from her daughter that she was being asked to put on an ankle monitor.
The mother drove to the school and spoke with an employee in the school office as well as the team coach. She was told the ankle monitoring program is for unvaccinated teens.
The program was allegedly designed for contact tracing in the event of a positive COVID test of a student.
More from the Post Millenial:
The TraceTag device used by the school was made by a company called Triax. According to their website, the device was created for the purpose of “maintaining social distancing guidelines” and to provide “real-time insight into whether these guidelines are being observed” for construction and other manufacturing businesses, but makes no mention of school use on the website.
The devices provide “…a visual and audible alarm, so individuals know when to adjust their current distance to a proper social distance.”
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Additionally, the monitors provide “Passive collection of worker interactions for contact tracing should an individual test positive.”
According to Triax, the device “…is affixed to any hardhat or worn on the body for proximity detection and contact tracing.”
The mother identified the coach as Gavin Kralik, who told her that the device would inform the players when they were too close together and was only used for indoor sports. She was also informed that the device would be used for contract tracing so that in the event of a positive test, non-vaccinated students would have to quarantine for up to 14 days. Vaccinated students would not have to quarantine.
The devices were not mentioned in the district’s back-to-school policies for fall 2021.
The mother said she was told by Kralik that there were forms to opt-out of the program at a meeting the previous week which she was not informed about and additionally, had received no communication about the meeting or the devices. According to the mother, the athletic director acknowledged the error and apologized for the “slip up” of not getting her consent.