Does tracking school children with computer chips make them more
safe -- or more vulnerable? A San Antonio school district has
sided with the former, though not without some debate. The end
result is that Northside Independent School District will begin
the 2012 school year by distributing ID cards enabled with radio
frequency identification (RFID) chips throughout three schools
and to 6,290 of its students. The main idea here is to be able
to determine where any given student is at any time during the
school day. That's the main idea. The other part of this is that
it could help the school district net hundreds of thousands --
if not millions -- of additional dollars. But more on that in a
moment. The chips will be able to detect when a student boards a
school bus and where in the school they are located, though it
won't work outside of school grounds. "Parents expect that we
always know where their children are, and this technology will
help us do that," said district spokesman Pascual Gonzalez.
"This way w