August 22, 2013

SAN ANTONIO, Texas — School officials with the Northside Independent School District have agreed to re-admit Andrea Hernandez to John Jay High School’s Science and Engineering Academy. Hernandez, who will resume her studies at John Jay as a high school junior when school convenes on Monday, Aug. 26, was expelled from the magnet school program after raising religious freedom and privacy objections to NISD’s “Student Locator Project,” which relied on RFID tracking badges to enable school officials to track students’ location on school property. After a drawn-out battle waged in court and within the community, school officials with the Northside Independent School District announced their decision to stop using the RFID tracking badges. According to school officials, the decision to cease the “Student Locator Project” was due in part to low participation rates, negative publicity, and a lawsuit by The Rutherford Institute, whose attorneys had filed suit against school officials in November 2012 on behalf of Hernandez, then a sophomore.

https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/on_the_fro...