The Eatonville School District in Washington D.C. announced on Tuesday that it received grant funding to pay for "athletic proximity monitors" that they will require student athletes and staff to wear on the field, regardless if they are vaccinated against COVID. The school said the effort was to ensure better social distancing and contact tracing among its faculty and student body amid the spread of COVID's delta variant.
"If a student or coach tests positive, we will have immediate information regarding athletes' and coaches' contact, so we can more tightly determine who might need to quarantine," Eatonville School District Superintendent Gary Neal said, as reported by the New York Post.
The proximity monitors are equipped with radio-based sensors that track the distance between its wearers. They will be required for athletes and staff participating in moderate- and high-contact indoor sports, causing an uproar from parents who believe the social distancing gadgets are an invasion of their child's privacy, despite the school saying that the students will not be tracked while off the field.
An Eatonville High School website reassured that "the monitor is only worn during participation in the sport." The very same proximity monitors are currently being used by the NFL to "modernize contact tracing." The Southeastern Conference college football teams are also using such contact tracing devices.
The Washington D.C. school district insists that wearing the social distancing proximity monitors are optional but said that those who refuse to wear it will not be able to participate in any games, putting students in a dire situation.
"I was notified if I didn't sign it, they couldn't play," Jason Ostendorf, whose son and daughter play football and volleyball respectively, told the Tacoma News Tribune via Faithwire. "I signed it reluctantly. It's either that or he doesn't play."
Ostendorf decried the U.S. public school's claim that the proximity monitors are "optional," which they are not because if the student athletes do not wear it, they will be prohibited to play. The father lamented, "They're putting tracking devices on my kid. It's absolutely against my better judgment and every fiber of what I think is right."
Meanwhile, the school district has set a meeting on Wednesday to invite parents and community members to sound off on the new social distancing measures involving proximity measures. School board director Matt Marshall committed to "[fighting] requirements that segregate students based on vaccination status."
The school board is also looking to temporarily hold the plan on implementing proximity monitor mandates until "proper procedures, including community input and board approval process, occur."
According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) COVID guidelines, the health authority "recommends everyone 12 years and older should get a COVID-19 vaccination" to help protect against the disease.
The Biden administration has doubled down on private sectors, including schools and universities to push them to implement vaccine mandates on their students and faculty. As of Saturday, the number of children hospitalized for COVID reached a record high of more than 1,900, Reuters reported.
