High school teams vote to continue using ankle monitoring system for contact tracing

At least two teams at Eatonville High School, which required student athletes to wear ankle monitors in order to contact trace for Covid, have overwhelmingly voted to continue the practice.

Following a meeting with the school board Wednesday night, the program was originally shelved, but the decision to continue using the devices was left up to each team. Students who opted not to wear the devices would not be allowed to play.

The football team voted 63-2 in favor of the devices. A parent told The Post Millennial that one student is now off the team, and another will be playing under protest.

One of the football student captains at the board meeting made clear the reasons behind wanting to wear the devices, be able to have a complete season unlike last year and "...for the first time in 30 years win a state championship."

On Friday night, the girls volleyball team also voted to use the ankle monitors by a vote of 22-3. One parent told The Post Millennial that she has unenrolled her daughter from the school because of the devices and because she was not informed they would be used.

Nicci Hadman, the mother of the volleyball player, who spoke in an interview on The Ari Hoffman Show on Talk Radio 570 KVI, specified that her understanding was that unvaccinated students would be segregated and have to quarantine for up to 14 days while vaccinated students would not have to quarantine if there was a positive COVID test among the cohort.

According to sources at the school, the entire volleyball team was not informed of the original meeting where the devices were announced. As such the implementation of the devices came as a surprise to some of the players and their parents.

At the Wednesday night school board meeting, it was announced that staff members at the school would have access to the data from the devices including the athletic director, the coach and the school nurse.

The program of monitoring student athletes employs the TraceTag device used by the school. It was made by a company called Triax. It was allegedly designed for contact tracing in the event of a positive COVID test of a student.

The school district's website reads that "Any student with symptoms suspicious for Covid-19 including, but not limited to fever, cough, runny nose/congestion, headache, sore throat, fatigue, body aches, loss of taste/smell who is not tested for Covid-19 must remain out of school for 10 days and 24 hours after fever resolves (without the use of fever reducing medications). Any student with the above symptoms who tests positive for Covid -19 must also remain out of school for 10 days after the start of their symptoms and 24 hours after fever resolves (without the use of fever reducing medications)."

Parents asserted that if children in the school, not just on the sports teams, exhibited any symptoms, they would be barred from attending school for up to 14 days if they were not vaccinated.

Jason Ostendorf, a father of a football player at the school, told The Post Millennial that the devices would track how much time players spent in proximity to each other and that 15-minutes was the threshold for being subject to quarantine. Ostendorf said, "This seems like the first step down a path we should not be going. People that are supporting it (the program) are desperate and willing to give up freedoms to have some semblance of normalcy back."

Ostendorf noted that many of the families identified as conservatives and saw the ankle monitors as a "work around" to the state's onerous mandates and therefore allow teams to continue playing and not have to miss weeks at a time in the event of a positive test.

"I am in a tough spot," Ostendorf told The Post Millennial. "My son has played for 7 years. I don't want the tracker on him but I don't want to tell him he can't play."

Ostendorf was also concerned that this would be the first step towards students having to wear the devices in class and that this could be rolled out across the state. “Where does it end?” Ostendorf asked.

A letter from the school to "Eatonville families" stated that "This is the same technology used in professional athletics. "NFL is Using Technology to Modernize Contact Tracing, Prevent Spread of COVID-19." In addition to the NFL’s practice, the Southeast Conference (SEC) followed their lead using devices for proximity monitoring for their college-level football players.

"This system prevents taking students out of school and athletics unnecessarily. It allows us to keep more students engaged and involved in class as well as athletic activities. This is a top priority for staff and families here in Eatonville. This school year we can expect numerous changes and for situations to be dynamic."

Hoffman spoke to Hadman about this comparison to the NFL during the radio interview, and made the point that children are minors, not paid athletes, and that parents, like Hadman, didn't give consent to this. Ostendorf said that parents like himself felt they had no choice but to consent to the monitoring to permit participation or risk future athletic scholarships and their children's college careers.

According to Triax, the monitors were 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." Additionally, the monitors provide "Passive collection of worker interactions for contact tracing should an individual test positive."

One parent told The Post Millennial that during the school board meeting, attendees were told that the audible alarms on the devices would be turned off. According to Triax, the device "…is affixed to any hardhat or worn on the body for proximity detection and contact tracing."

The school district, per Eatonville School District Superintendent Gary Neal stated that: "We received grant funding (known as ESSER III) that specifically included provisions to support higher-risk athletic programs, and we used some of those funds to pay for athletic proximity monitors. We are using these monitors for high contact and moderate indoor contact sports. The monitors are for both staff (coaches) and students on the field, regardless if they are vaccinated or unvaccinated. If a student or coach tests positive, we will have immediate information regarding athletes' and coaches' contacts, so we can more tightly determine who might need to quarantine."

Several parents also told The Post Millennial that they were concerned that Eatonville’s ankle monitoring program would be used as a pilot program for non-athletes during class, but also in other schools across the state.