Acceptance of a $6,475 donation from the Saxe Middle School Parent Teacher Council for a purchase of Polar FitBit monitors to track the heart rate of seventh and eighth-grade gym students, as they participate in physical activity, was the result of a 38-minute debate among Board of Education members at the March 21 meeting.
Concern among the school board stemmed around the privacy of students and how the data would be collected by Polar servers in Finland. School board members Penny Rashin and Maria Naughton were vocal in opposition to allowing third-party vendors access to student’s personal information.
Board member Brendan Hayes said, “I just don’t view that data as particularly problematic if it were to get out there. If you had your address, parent’s names, social security number, that sort of stuff, which is frankly shared on a daily basis by all of us, I think that’s a lot more problematic.”
Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment Dr. Jill Correnty said, “The only data that the teachers would be entering at this time is the student’s name and heart monitor rate.”
Superintendent of Schools Bryan Luizzi said, “They do go through security provisions. All of the personally identifiable information would be protected. The only access to that information is through Polar employees if they are doing something on behalf of the school district.”
“If we were to stop with Polar at anytime they would destroy the data that they have and send us something verifying that they destroyed the data,” Luizzi said.
After most of the debate between school board members were conducted, member Hazel Hobbs suggested that the solution is to assign each student with a number and record the data without any personal information being stored, other than the active heart rate of number 362.
Saxe physical exercise and health teacher Jonathan Adams proposed the idea for the seventh and eighth graders and said that he did a lot of research on the heart monitors. After having lengthy conversations with Athletic Director Jay Egan, who oversees all of the Physical Education and Health departments, and with Director of Digital Learning Matthew Salvestrini who confirmed the monitors would be compliant with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), he approached the Saxe PTC about possibly funding the program.
The Board approved the donation for Polar Fitbit heart monitors.
Why monitor
According to Correnty, the tool allows the children to have a gym teacher help monitor their heart rate and to try and get them into the 140-190 beats per minute “target” zone for peak aerobic activity.
The monitors would be synced to the gym teacher’s iPad, and, as the children begin to exercise, the teacher is able to monitor the heart rate of students, and give individual feedback based on the data. Correnty said, “It’s really about setting personal goals and giving children individual feedback.”
“This would be a little bit more scientific, it would give the teacher some opportunities to have individual conversations with kids and talk about ways to personally set goals for themselves,” Correnty said.
Board member Hazel Hobbs speaking at the March 21 Board of Education meeting. —Rich Durazzo, Jr. photo
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