When Aaliyah Iglesias was caught vaping at a Texas high school, she didn’t realize how much hair could be taken.
Suddenly, the rest of her high school experience was threatened: student body president, her role as captain of the debate team, and running at graduation. Even her scholarships were at risk. She was sent to the district’s alternative school for 30 days and was told she could face criminal charges.
Like thousands of other students across the country, she was caught by surveillance equipment that schools have installed to crack down on electronic cigarettes, often without notifying students.
Schools across the country have invested millions of dollars in the monitoring technology, including federal COVID-19 relief money intended to help schools through the pandemic and promote students’ academic recovery. Marketing materials have noted that the sensors, which cost more than $1,000 each, can help combat the virus by monitoring air quality.
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This story is a collaboration between student journalists from Stanford University and the University of Missouri, in collaboration with The Associated Press.
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E-cigarettes have swept middle and high schools. The devices can deliver vapor containing higher concentrations of nicotine than tobacco cigarettes. Millions of minors are reporting vaping, despite efforts to limit sales to children by raising the legal age to 21 and banning flavored products favored by teens.
Some districts link the sensors to surveillance cameras. When activated by a vapor sensor, these cameras can capture any student leaving the bathroom.
Students may be surprised that schools even have such technology. Iglesias, who graduated in May from Tyler High School in Tyler, Texas, first discovered it had sensors after an administrator entered a restroom when students started vaping.
“I was impressed,” Iglesias said. The administrator tried to find out who was involved, but ultimately let all the students go.
The episode that got her in trouble happened elsewhere in Texas, at Athens High School, where her debate team competed last February. Iglesias went to a bathroom to vape. Later that day, her coach told her she had been caught.
“I decided to participate in something that I am not proud of, but I did it,” Iglesias said, adding that her senior year was a stressful time and that a close relative of hers was about to be released from prison come. “I had built up a lot of personal things outside.”
She was immediately pulled from the debate tournament and her coach told her she could be sued because she was 18. She was sent to her district’s alternative school for 30 days, which was the minimum punishment for students caught vaping under Tyler Schools’ zero-tolerance policy. policy.
Students caught vaping can also be cited and fined up to $100. Students found with vapes containing THC, the chemical that makes marijuana users feel high, could be arrested on misdemeanor charges. At least 90 students in Tyler have been charged with misdemeanors or misdemeanors.
The Tyler district declined to comment on the disciplinary action, saying in a written statement that tracking vape use addresses a problem that harms children’s health.
“The vape detectors are efficient at detecting when students are vaping, allowing us to immediately address the problem,” the school system said.
A leading supplier, HALO Smart Sensors, sells 90% to 95% of its sensors to schools. The sensors do not have cameras and do not record audio, but can detect increases in noise in a school bathroom and send a text message alert to school officials, said Rick Cadiz, vice president of sales and marketing for IPVideo, the maker of the HALO sensors .
The sensors are primarily marketed for detecting vape smoke or THC, but can also monitor for sounds such as gunshots or keywords that indicate possible bullying.
“What we’re seeing with the districts is that they’re doing this to stop vaping in the schools, but we also don’t want a $1,000 paperweight that the school is investing for no other use, right?” said Cadiz. “We want it to be a long-term investment.”
During the pandemic, HALO noted on its website that monitoring indoor air quality was an approved use of federal COVID relief money.
“With the HALO Smart Sensor, you can combat COVID-19 in your schools and create a safe working and learning environment, while also reaping the benefits of vapor detection, security monitoring and more,” the company said.
Schools can also now use some of the nearly $440 million Juul Labs is paying to settle a lawsuit alleging it sold its products to young people, Cadiz said.
The company is aware of privacy concerns surrounding the sensors, Cadiz said.
“All it does is warn that something is going on,” he said. “You need someone to physically examine the warning that comes out.”
The sensors don’t always work as administrators hope.
At the San Dieguito Union High School District in California, vapor smoke was so thick in the bathrooms that some students found it unbearable. In a pilot program, the district installed vapor sensors in bathrooms and cameras outside doors.
“In some ways it was too successful,” said Michael Allman, a member of the county executive, who explained that the sensors went off so often that administrators found it pointless to review the security footage each time.
On social media, students from across the country describe ways to outsmart the sensors. Some report being covered in plastic wrap. Others say they blow the smoke into their clothes.
In the Coppell Independent School District in Texas, sensors are part of a prevention strategy that includes educational videos and a tip line. Students can receive $50 for reporting vaping by peers and “they were turning each other right and left,” said Jennifer Villines, the district’s director of student and staff services.
Students can be sent to an alternative school or serve an in-school suspension, but will not be expelled for vaping, she said.
“We want our children here. If they’re not there, they’re not learning,” Villines said. “We also feel that these types of behaviors are coping mechanisms in some cases, and we want to keep them in our environment where they learn to self-regulate.”
The consequences for Iglesias included resigning as student body president and debate leader and leaving the National Honor Society. At the alternative school where she spent a month, students take regular courses, but do not attend classes and cannot guarantee that the materials will be included in their regular classes.
Iglesias was still able to go to prom, walk to graduation and stay at most of her clubs. She also kept her scholarship and now attends Tyler Junior College.
For her, the penalties for vaping have gone too far.
“The people who make these policies and implement these things sit in a room and don’t walk the campuses or see the results, the consequences of these policies that they make to actually make sure it works, because it doesn’t ,” said Iglesias. . “I will never do something like that again, because the consequences I experienced were terrible.”
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In addition to Munis of Stanford University and McCarthy of the University of Missouri, the following student reporters contributed to this report: Yasmeen Saadi, Mikaela Schlueter, Asplen Gengenbacher and Alexis Simmerman of the University of Missouri; Parker Daly, Elise Darragh-Ford, Emily Handsel, Henry Hill-Gorman, Victoria Ren, Shaurya Sinha, Carolyn Stein and Jessica Yu from Stanford University.
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