Eatonville High School halts use of contact-tracing ankle monitors for student-athletes
Aug 26, 2021, 6:45 AM | Updated: 11:23 am
Football players at Eatonville High School. (KIRO 7)
(KIRO 7)
After fielding outrage from parents, Eatonville High School has decided to pause a program that had student-athletes wearing contact-tracing ankle monitors to track their proximity to each other during practices and competitions.
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Originally, the plan was to have the ankle monitors trace potential COVID-19 cases among student-athletes and coaches, many of whom have been wearing them during high contact and indoor contact sports, regardless of vaccination status.
“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,” the district said in a statement to KTTH’s Jason Rantz Show.
While the school says parents were sought out for consent, some said they were not actually consulted.
“Whatever pretty word you want to use for it, you put an electronic device around my child’s ankle without my consent,” one parent said during a public school board district meeting held this week.
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The monitors contain similar technology to what’s used in both the NFL and the SEC, with the goal of ensuring that COVID-related quarantines are limited to as few athletes as possible. In practice, it uses radio-based sensors to detect the proximity among those wearing the monitors, but does not track a wearer’s physical location.
Football players at Eatonville High School expressed their own support for the contact-tracing monitors during this week’s district meeting.
“I just think they’re a great idea, and thank you to the coaches for giving us that opportunity to wear them and let us have a season,” Eatonville football player Kevin Wolfe said. “If one kid gets COVID, then they can only take out three kids that were around them for those 15 minutes.”
For now, the district will be halting the program, with plans to let coaches, students, and parents decide together on whether to use the monitors moving forward.
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