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> Following this advice and using a tone that even resembles the tone of the comment or the original post will make you look/sound crazy. Thank you. Also, plea

> Following this advice and using a tone that even resembles the tone of the comment or the original post will make you look/sound crazy. Thank you. Also, please ignore every comment in this thread suggesting you lawyer up or go to small claims court. The laptop isn't ruined and can be reset whenever the OP wants (as they already established). If you go in guns blazing to the school board, the school is going to go into full defensive mode. Once you've established yourself as the aggressive parent with an axe to grind, they're not going to be interested at all in working with you. If you actually want to get anywhere with this, start with a friendly e-mail to the school's IT staff. Ask them how your child can do their schoolwork without putting the laptop under school control. If you go in with a reasonable approach, you might get a sympathetic IT person who will walk you through the situation and explain the options. > Realistically what probably happened here is they have slightly clueless people who installed standard-issue software without thinking to check if the student actually owned the chromebook That would be my first assumption. I would even guess that they aren't keen on having yet another license tied up on a student's device somewhere. Don't immediately rush to assumptions of malicious intent, don't think that making a scene at a school board event will further your goals, and definitely don't take any of the suggestions here to lawyer up or otherwise waste a lot of time and money on a legal fight that you will surely lose.

docmars 5y ago
> If you go in guns blazing to the school board, the school is going to go into full defensive mode. Once you've established yourself as the aggressive parent with an axe to grind, they're not going to be interested at all in working with you. Too bad! They can be voted out, or face lawsuits if a heated attitude is too much for them that they feel the need to ignore valid feedback regardless of the emotions involved. I've heard the same argument used for angry minority communities in the past, so this very much applies here as well. Heated rhetoric school boards are seeing today are reminiscent of a body that isn't listening.
- Scarblac 5y ago
  They can't be voted out by you alone though. And what he wrote about the school is just as true for the majority of other parents.
- kelnos 5y ago
  The question I like to ask myself in instances like these, when I'm pissed off at what I see as unreasonable attitudes and processes, is this: Do I care more about making myself feel better by airing my grievances in whatever way suits my fancy, or do I care about a specific outcome? If it's the latter, then the best thing to do is to figure out who is in charge, and, critically, the right way to talk to them in order to get the response -- and hopefully the outcome -- I want. Sure, I could turn this into a crusade to vote out the school board and replace them with... who, exactly? The kind of people who are qualified and likely to get elected are probably pretty similar to the people there already: not too technically-inclined, and not willing to put up with an aggressive attack from parents. Even if I did manage to find and elect a school board that would take this kind of issue seriously without needing much prodding, by the time I went through this whole process, it'll be... a year? Two years? More? The ship will have sailed, and my hypothetical kid will have leaked all their private data to the school's nanny software already. So hopefully I'd instead do the smart thing, approach the school board in a way that resonates with them, and get the outcome I want. > I've heard the same argument used for angry minority communities in the past I don't think this really applies here. Most "angry minority communities" are fighting for things that are systemically stacked against them, and often the "polite" approach doesn't work. But we're not talking about systemic oppression here; we're talking about an overworked, underpaid school IT department that doesn't have much choice in what they do, directed by a school board that doesn't understand the issues involved.
  - hanselot 5y ago
  - wst_ 5y ago
    This! The most important thing I'm asking myself: What do I want to achieve? Does "yelling" at people rises my chances in achieving this? Later on, when my immediate goal is achieved, I can decide do I care enough to follow up or not. First things first - sort out your priority.
- coldtea 5y ago
  >Too bad! They can be voted out, or face lawsuits if a heated attitude is too much for them that they feel the need to ignore valid feedback regardless of the emotions involved. Only the world doesn't magically grants wishes to Kens and Karens, just because they feel strongly about something and how right they are. The person taking that board to court or trying to vote them out could just as trivially lose.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
boomlinde 5y ago
> The laptop isn't ruined and can be reset whenever the OP wants (as they already established). I take it that it's fine that I install a microphone with a transmitter in your ceiling fixture so long as I do 't damage the fixture itself. > Don't immediately rush to assumptions of malicious intent Is there a good reason to doubt that the intended purpose for installing the software was to use its advertised functionality?
- simonh 5y ago
  If they thought the laptop was school property, then comparisons to wilful intrusion into someone’s house is hyperbolic, and no it wasn’t malicious. It would be more like if the cops had a valid warrant to track a suspects car, but installed the tracker in the wrong car by mistake. Best to establish the facts first.
  - carschno 5y ago
    Installing monitoring software (spyware) on a laptop that is owned by the school is legit only if you consider the student exactly that: a suspect. In that sense, your comment is spot-on. Following that logic, the act itself does not seem malicious. However, the logic of seeing students as suspects is.
    - simonh 5y ago
      That's fair, I'm not saying they are right to do it in that sense.
    - sillysaurusx 5y ago
      I have a sort of extremist take on this: students are literally prisoners. The job of a high school is to keep students from harming each other, feed them, and occasionally teach them something. It’s why one of the highest offenses is to leave school grounds during school. Ditto for prison. In that light, of course students are suspects. They’re already guilty of not being adults. They’re not allowed to have jobs, or to decide what they want to learn, or any of the other things that make adults human. I don’t know what to do about it, but recognizing it seems step one.

docmars 5y ago

> If you go in guns blazing to the school board, the school is going to go into full defensive mode. Once you've established yourself as the aggressive parent with an axe to grind, they're not going to be interested at all in working with you. Too bad! They can be voted out, or face lawsuits if a heated attitude is too much for them that they feel the need to ignore valid feedback regardless of the emotions involved. I've heard the same argument used for angry minority communities in the past, so this very much applies here as well. Heated rhetoric school boards are seeing today are reminiscent of a body that isn't listening.

Scarblac 5y ago
They can't be voted out by you alone though. And what he wrote about the school is just as true for the majority of other parents.
kelnos 5y ago
The question I like to ask myself in instances like these, when I'm pissed off at what I see as unreasonable attitudes and processes, is this: Do I care more about making myself feel better by airing my grievances in whatever way suits my fancy, or do I care about a specific outcome? If it's the latter, then the best thing to do is to figure out who is in charge, and, critically, the right way to talk to them in order to get the response -- and hopefully the outcome -- I want. Sure, I could turn this into a crusade to vote out the school board and replace them with... who, exactly? The kind of people who are qualified and likely to get elected are probably pretty similar to the people there already: not too technically-inclined, and not willing to put up with an aggressive attack from parents. Even if I did manage to find and elect a school board that would take this kind of issue seriously without needing much prodding, by the time I went through this whole process, it'll be... a year? Two years? More? The ship will have sailed, and my hypothetical kid will have leaked all their private data to the school's nanny software already. So hopefully I'd instead do the smart thing, approach the school board in a way that resonates with them, and get the outcome I want. > I've heard the same argument used for angry minority communities in the past I don't think this really applies here. Most "angry minority communities" are fighting for things that are systemically stacked against them, and often the "polite" approach doesn't work. But we're not talking about systemic oppression here; we're talking about an overworked, underpaid school IT department that doesn't have much choice in what they do, directed by a school board that doesn't understand the issues involved.
- hanselot 5y ago
- wst_ 5y ago
  This! The most important thing I'm asking myself: What do I want to achieve? Does "yelling" at people rises my chances in achieving this? Later on, when my immediate goal is achieved, I can decide do I care enough to follow up or not. First things first - sort out your priority.
coldtea 5y ago
>Too bad! They can be voted out, or face lawsuits if a heated attitude is too much for them that they feel the need to ignore valid feedback regardless of the emotions involved. Only the world doesn't magically grants wishes to Kens and Karens, just because they feel strongly about something and how right they are. The person taking that board to court or trying to vote them out could just as trivially lose.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

boomlinde 5y ago

> The laptop isn't ruined and can be reset whenever the OP wants (as they already established). I take it that it's fine that I install a microphone with a transmitter in your ceiling fixture so long as I do 't damage the fixture itself. > Don't immediately rush to assumptions of malicious intent Is there a good reason to doubt that the intended purpose for installing the software was to use its advertised functionality?

simonh 5y ago
If they thought the laptop was school property, then comparisons to wilful intrusion into someone’s house is hyperbolic, and no it wasn’t malicious. It would be more like if the cops had a valid warrant to track a suspects car, but installed the tracker in the wrong car by mistake. Best to establish the facts first.
- carschno 5y ago
  Installing monitoring software (spyware) on a laptop that is owned by the school is legit only if you consider the student exactly that: a suspect. In that sense, your comment is spot-on. Following that logic, the act itself does not seem malicious. However, the logic of seeing students as suspects is.
  - simonh 5y ago
    That's fair, I'm not saying they are right to do it in that sense.
  - sillysaurusx 5y ago
    I have a sort of extremist take on this: students are literally prisoners. The job of a high school is to keep students from harming each other, feed them, and occasionally teach them something. It’s why one of the highest offenses is to leave school grounds during school. Ditto for prison. In that light, of course students are suspects. They’re already guilty of not being adults. They’re not allowed to have jobs, or to decide what they want to learn, or any of the other things that make adults human. I don’t know what to do about it, but recognizing it seems step one.