Lockdown High: When the Schoolhouse Becomes a Jailhouse by Annette Fuentes

Author:Annette Fuentes [Fuentes, Annette]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Verso
Published: 2013-02-10T23:00:00+00:00

6 THE PROFITEERS OF LOCKDOWN HIGH

The market for security is about $17 billion in the United States [in 2007] and it is growing by a factor of 20 percent a year, among the fastest growing industries. My impression is that schools are way behind the curve. They don’t understand the risks involved in having a thousand kids on campus. Yes, they are scrambling to catch up but they aren’t there yet.

—Security International Association researcher Linda Yelton

The exhibit hall of San Francisco’s sprawling Moscone Convention Center was bustling with conference-goers on the first day of the National School Boards Association annual gathering in April 2007. The NSBA drew 6,800 school board members and superintendents from around the country to its signature event of workshops, seminars, luncheons and notable keynote speakers, such as Bill Clinton, to ponder public education. Nowhere was the excitement as palpable as in the hall, that great marketplace of vendors hawking their wares directly to the people who control school district budgets. According to the NSBA, the total buying power behind those collective purse strings in 2007 totaled $280 billion. Throughout 55,000 square feet of exhibits, 355 vendors courted potential customers, displaying tables laden with bowls of bite-sized candy bars, eye-catching key chains and sleek ball-point pens emblazoned with company logos. Participants jostled along crowded aisles, bearing tote bags bulging with trinkets and glossy brochures describing the latest in playground equipment, the newest software for payroll management and computer-chip-carrying IDs to monitor student attendance. Here, the well-aimed sales pitch might hit just the right target who, back home, would lobby the local school board to invest in that newfangled technology, this appealing gadget.

A tour of the exhibit hall could easily fill hours with a mind-numbing variety of products both real and surreal—with sales raps to match. Over at Fisher Labs, the oldest manufacturer of hobby metal detectors in the country, a full-fledged, walk-through, portable metal detector beckoned attendees. This was definitely not for finding lost coins and jewelry. Fisher jumped into the security-related metal detector business only five years ago, according to its pitch woman Eva Shea. Now 28 percent of its customers are schools, mostly colleges, “but we’re moving into high schools and middle schools,” Shea adds. The portable display model sells for $5,000. Business is best on the East Coast and is aided by police departments that partner with school districts to buy Fisher’s detectors with federal grant money. Shea says her company’s participation at the NSBA convention evoked a few raised eyebrows at first. “I got some weird looks. People were surprised we would be here,” she says. “One woman said, ‘oh, this is terrible.’ But then I explained why we’re here.”

Inner Link, a company based in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, promises “smart solutions for a health future” through a panoply of “web-based health and safety technology solutions,” according to literature at the company’s booth. Dr. Robert Gillio, a critical care doctor, founded the company in 2002 because “he wanted to bring health and education to students,” says Rod Schoening, a project manager.

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