NEISD Will Monitor Social Media to Detect School Threats

A summer's worth of Texas Legislative hearings on school safety have districts across the state looking to beef up their policies as kids return to class, and one San Antonio district is thinking outside of the box, Newsradio 1200 WOAI reports.

The Northeast ISD has hired a company that monitors social media around the clock.

District Spokeswoman Aubrey Chancellor says kids spend much of their lives on sites like twitter and Instagram, and there have been times when it's hard to tell what could be a threat.

"You don’t know if they're real or fake, so we've contracted with a third party that will monitor any social media related to Northeast ISD," she says.

And if there is a red flag, they can launch an investigation.

"We know there is not one end all, be all solution.  This is one facet to help increase our security."

Postings to social media are a big part of the investigation into the Santa Fe school shooting.  Ten people were killed and more than a dozen hurt last May in the Houston suburb.

Before going on the rampage, the gunman posted a now-deleted photo of a black T-shirt with the words 'born to kill' printed across the front.  The 11th-grader also took to Instagram to post pictures of a handgun, a knife and a torch with a profanity-laced caption.

The district is also moving to transparent backpacks in middle and high schools.  

Hand-held metal detectors are now in place at each campus so that all students and visitors can be subjected to random searches.

About 4500 cameras have been added to their campuses, bringing the total number of surveillance cameras across the district to 8,750.


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