On Tuesday, April 28th, 2026, at 8:08 AM EST, the fragile world of our humble little school was interrupted by the sudden appearance of an email from Principal Peter Varela titled “Important: Gaggle Online Monitoring”. Students and teachers everywhere paused their learning to sort of awkwardly half-skim the email, not actually expecting anything important. But what they found has led to endless rumors, confused classroom debates, and nervous spam texts in group chats around the school.
The email itself was a brief overview of the new implementation of the Gaggle monitoring platform. Gaggle, as described by Mr. Varela’s email, is a platform that autoflags keywords relating to the following:
- Self-harm
- Depression
- Substance use
- Physical abuse
- Pornographic content
- Violence/weapons
- “and other sensitive areas.”
Every time a word is flagged, an administrator is notified, and staff will review the content in question before calling up a student to discuss the matter with them, “even when the content is connected to schoolwork.” Certain flags may also result in disciplinary action, in accordance with the school’s AUP.
Notably, the email continues to explain, “Gaggle monitors activity on district-issued devices and on personal devices when connected to the school network. Monitoring is continuous (24/7), and alerts may occur at any time, including evenings and weekends.”
Students almost immediately had questions.
While on the surface, Gaggle seems entirely innocuous, concerns quickly emerged about potential privacy violations. A lot of people immediately assumed that anything searched up, texted, sent, opened, or looked at in school could be seen by Gaggle.
According to the platform’s own website, however, this isn’t entirely the case. Gaggle can effectively see anything you do while logged into your student email account or on a school-owned device, yes, but not anything you do on your personal account unless connected to the school Wi-Fi. It apparently also cannot see cellular phone calls or text messages. If connected to the school Wi-Fi, it can see:
- Your searches on Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge (including your search history)
- Content entered into forms, chats, emails, drafts, and unsent content
- Anything in your Google Drive
- Visited website URLs
- Social media posts and chats
They aren’t directly flagging staff accounts, but can see whatever a teacher sends to students through Google Drive. Multiple assignments have already been flagged, specifically in Social Studies classes that focus on discussing current and historical events. I would also like to note that collected data will be purged if you are graduating/transferring out of the district, if the school chooses not to renew its contract with the platform, or if compelled to by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) regulations. Meaning, all data related to your academic record is completely protected, and the data of children under age 13 must only be collected with express parental consent.
In essence, the data Gaggle has access to isn’t very different from what the school has always had access to.
Now, that fact by itself doesn’t discount existing student concerns over what Gaggle can access. For example, there is a potential equity concern here. Some students have no choice but to use school devices. They have no alternative. Their school email account and Chromebook might be their only way to access the online world. This would effectively mean that these students are more susceptible to Gaggle monitoring than other kids. This school has already been criticized for making it harder in many ways for economically struggling students to succeed. Club dues, for example, are seen by many as an unnecessary economic barrier to getting kids into extracurricular activities. Sure, students in the Free and Reduced Lunch program are waived of all club dues, but this program isn’t guaranteed to account for all economically disadvantaged students. Some people just don’t meet the cut-off. And the same nuances apply to the free Chromebooks our district provides.
And, in general, the thought of any of your data being monitored by a third party is just scary. Students have every right to be concerned about what’s happening to their information, regardless of how “new” this monitoring truly is.
When I had a chance to sit down with Mr. Varela, his response to this concern was simple. He asked me if I had a job. I do; I work at the most nightmarish part of every ABCD’s childhood, a local Kumon. He pointed out that, no matter what, while I am working at said Kumon and using Kumon-owned devices, I am to be held responsible to Kumon’s standards of behavior.
When I talked to Dr. Bernard Bragen Jr., our new superintendent, his response followed similar rhetoric. As unfair as it may be, school property is school property. You’re as accountable to your student account as you are to the locker that you never use. In the modern day, arguably more so.
Though I’d argue that both of these analogies carry one fatal flaw. Kumon isn’t funding its monitoring systems with my taxpayer dollars. And rest assured, the only reason people aren’t upset about our useless lockers is that they aren’t a current expense. If the school suddenly announced it planned on spending an additional $40K (the approximate annual cost of Gaggle, according to Bragen) on building a whole new stretch of a couple of hundred lockers nobody wanted, people would be just as furious! Especially if this addition meant that a certain percentage of the student population was now all but mandated to be routinely shoved into said lockers like the stereotypical nerds in old 80s movies. Especially especially when those specific kids are struggling to be as successful as others in this school as it is.
But fine, yes. Again, on a technical, legal basis, not much has really changed. From the moment you first signed an AUP for South Brunswick, you have agreed to be held accountable for all digital actions done on your school email account, school-provided devices, and school Wi-Fi. Gaggle is just the expansion of a surveillance system that’s always existed.
What makes Gaggle a truly significant addition is its flagging mechanisms. Now, by this point, most of you should know that Gaggle is at least partially AI-powered. I will say that some of its operations are conducted by real human monitors (who are paid only $10/hr, which is less than what our employed students get paid), though Gaggle has yet to clarify how the monitors are trained. Either way, the platform as a whole seems to have grown only more and more AI-forward over time. This is a double-edged sword. On one hand, AI is inarguably one of the most prominent technologies out there right now. It gets things done quickly, with…decent enough accuracy.
On the other hand, it’s hard to be okay with “decent” when AI is operating with your data.
Already, the halls have been filled with tales of students who have gotten “Gaggled,” the newly coined term designed for all your apocalyptic needs. Upon learning that I’m writing this article, multiple classmates, friends, and teachers have come to me with stories of incidents. Many of them were too scared of the school finding out they were involved to consent to being quoted. Despite every bit of reassurance, people already seem to view the school as a proper panopticon.
One such student, who wishes to remain anonymous, was working on a project about mental health issues for a senior health class. While looking into Major Depressive Disorder, one of his sources described side effects, which included suicidal ideation and self-harm. As part of the assignment, he also had to look up the suicide hotline and other ways to seek help for the disorder. He was called down a few blocks later to meet with his counselor. She reported to him that Gaggle had flagged his searches as being inappropriate and requiring action. He described the meeting as being stern and awkward as he explained his health project. He was let go untouched, but the experience was still bizarre.
The guiding principle behind all this is that it is better to be safe than sorry. It’s better to call up dozens of kids every day for silly little misunderstandings than to miss someone in clear need of help. Mr. Varela and I had a digression in the middle of our interview that I found particularly interesting. He asked, “Do you think the district, if they have the resources, should be spending money or trying to see if there are free resources out there that can help kids?”
I was a bit startled—I wasn’t expecting to become the interviewee. This was an unforeseen plot twist. I thought about it for a second before responding. “I mean, I think if we are taking care of kids, it’s our responsibility to do everything we can.”
That seemed to be the answer he was looking for. He replied, “Yeah! So again, I know that maybe being Gaggled might be a negative thing. But I always go back to ‘if it helps one kid, two kids…why not?’”
And I admire that perspective. I do believe the administrative staff has good intentions. But I worry the execution of all of this has been incredibly flawed.
For one, as we’ve already seen, most of the students getting Gaggled did not need actual help, nor were they caught doing something inappropriate. I don’t know if it’s a smart decision to flood the guidance team with so many nonsensical claims. Guidance is very busy. They have a lot of responsibilities. They are held accountable for the well-being of literally hundreds of kids; they’re already spread pretty thin. Gaggle certainly isn’t helping. And this overworking is frustrating on the student side of things, too. It can feel a little insulting for a guidance counselor to miss your emails about course changes, just for them to call you to their office the same day something is flagged on Gaggle.
In a written statement sent by Mr. Varela and Amy Finkelstein, our Student Assistance & Wellness Supervisor, explained Gaggle’s color-coded organizational system.
Gaggle has two types of alerts: orange and red. Orange is less significant and does not require immediate attention. Administration will manually review each orange flag before deciding whether a response is warranted. Red alerts, on the other hand, require “immediate notification and action,” as they automatically equate to “a serious student matter.”
According to my interview with Mrs. Finkelstein, as of June, we’ve yet to have a single red alert. They’ve all been orange. This theoretically means that Gaggle shouldn’t stress our resources as much as expected. The thing is, students were not informed of this color-coded system. The language of the communications that have been given to us seemed to imply that all alerts would be treated with the same weight, making concerns of overload more valid.
It seems that some of the early false positives we saw in April and May were because of growing pains related to the administrators themselves struggling with this system as well.
Dr. Bragen described some initial confusion among staff over how to tackle orange alerts. “They said, ‘Bernie, we keep getting these orange alerts. And we’re running around like a chicken with no head, trying to figure out what’s going on…’ Well, unless it’s red, it doesn’t require immediate attention.”
When it comes to whether this confusion will continue to inhibit the functionality of this new form of monitoring, Dr. Bragen seems confident it won’t. “We don’t understand how to use it. And we’re still getting acclimated to what level of alert warrants our immediate attention. Once all that gets navigated, which I would say we’re probably there now, I don’t envision this as going to inundate our resources and take away from the normal day-to-day operations.”
I understand that this early inefficiency has since been cleared up, and Dr. Bragen made it clear he doesn’t see it being a problem in the future, but it concerns me nonetheless. A platform as extensive as Gaggle should’ve been explained to our staff more thoroughly. And I still can’t help but think that having staff individually vet each orange alert is still taxing anyway, if not as taxing as calling every student down.
I had Mrs. Finkelstein walk me through what Gaggle actually looks from her side. After a flag has been triggered, a notification is sent to a handful of key administrators. The flag itself carries a few essential details: name, date, and time. After clicking into the notification, the administrator can see a list of keywords that were picked up on in searches, or even screenshots of things that were typed but not entered. After that, the administrator has to make a judgment call on what to do to resolve the issue. If they know a certain flag may be part of an assignment, they may contact the teacher to determine if action is necessary. They try to stay updated on different assignments going around. Depending on the nature of the flag, either the guidance counselors or the deans may be notified and asked to deal with the situation.
Sometimes, this means proper action on the part of the school. “And occasionally, it does lead to, potentially, a suicide assessment if we need to,” Finklestein said. “If there’s anything that might be a threat, we look into that. So, there are a few cases that we’ve needed to really take seriously or talk to a parent about something that happened. Most of the time, it’s not at that level.”
On top of this, all my interviewees confirmed to me that alerts truly are 24/7. “We’re here to support all students, right?” Says Mr. Varela. “So if that means we have to call down a few additional kids, we want to go above and beyond for every kid.”
Mr. Varela, as principal, is directly notified of severe Gaggle flaggings. He doesn’t seem bothered by the new responsibility. “It doesn’t matter what. It could be 1 o’clock in the morning. It could be 12 o’clock in the afternoon on a Saturday. It could be Sunday night at 8 PM—whenever…we’re always on call.”
Finkelstein did confirm to me that there has been a felt increase in workload since the implementation, but she also seems to view it as a just cost. “It brings attention to things that might be going on.”
This may be an administrative burden our staff is happy to take on, but it’s an administrative burden nonetheless. Consider the time these people spend in meetings with students who don’t need or want to meet with them. Consider the additional paperwork and bureaucratic processes they have to work through for each one. I just can’t help but be bothered by the unproductivity of it all. Finkelstein mentioned that all staff directly working with Gaggle receive training on how to use the platform itself. But that’s only a select few administrators. For everyone else, they’ve had to manage this sort of thing on their own.
Mr. Varela argued that even Gaggle’s mistakes serve as a sort of net good. These meetings, even if they do not result in proper disciplinary or supportive action, still allow students to get closer to administrators who can help them in the future. “And what we call a false positive, where it turns out that it’s nothing, that’s when you say, ‘Well, listen, at least we had a conversation. Hey, nice to meet you.’”
Mrs. Finkelstein felt similarly. “If it’s nothing, we are still meeting with the kids and talking to them. Like, okay, it’s not an emergency, we’re not calling home about it. But at least now you know that you can talk to your counselor about what’s going on.”
That is an incredibly sweet sentiment, but also in many ways naive. A student getting called to the office without any context is always a problem and should never be accepted as just “part of the process.” Not only does it pull kids away from vital learning time, but it also causes them undue stress. Teenagers fear authority. Everyone fears authority. Nobody wants to have to sit down with their principal and awkwardly defend their search history. Getting Gaggled is less likely to endear supportive staff to a student than it is to scare them away from ever getting help in the first place.
In a written statement sent prior to publication, Mrs. Finkelstein clarified that “A student is only called down for something they wrote/posted that is flagged. Our role is to determine whether there is any potential danger or crisis we can help with. We may have a conversation about the appropriate use of technology. Or, we may learn that this is part of an assignment. Sometimes, students may write about a past trauma or incident while writing college essays in [Google Drive.] If we can see that this was a past issue that may have helped shape who a student is now, and not an immediate concern, we do not call students down, and we are not looking to bring up past trauma.”
I do respect that, at the end of the day, they’re simply trying to do their job. But I’d also argue that the simple fact that getting Gaggled is already an established phenomenon in the student body indicates a level of discomfort that shouldn’t exist in a school. The functional purpose of all the Social Emotional Learning (SEL) we’ve been doing this year is to help us feel more comfortable here. It’s hard to feel that when you’re constantly aware that real-life Big Brother is watching you while you’re doing your research on Orwell for an English assignment.
When I had a chance to talk about some of the pros and cons of using Gaggle with Mrs. Finkelstein, she seemed to be pretty self-aware of how frequent false positives really are. “I think kids don’t realize yet how sensitive it is, and that things get picked up that might be embarrassing that you don’t want us to see. Even if you’re not in trouble.”
And I definitely agree. Students have no clue how sensitive Gaggle is. We really don’t know much about how it works at all. It seems our student body is split between those who are utterly ambivalent, don’t buy the hype, and search away as they please, and those who clutch onto their personal hotspots like their lives depend on them.
One of my greatest worries is that all this anxiety that’s penetrated conversations over Gaggle is going to have the opposite of the intended effect and push kids away from seeking the help they need. Sometimes people don’t have safe homes. And they don’t have secure and private personal accounts to use when needed. They may not have the money to spare for a private laptop. This school might be their only digital resource. And it can be scary using that resource to its full potential when there’s this ominous overhanging threat of getting called down to guidance and having your parents called.
How many kids will be too scared to search up the suicide hotline on their own now, knowing that other kids have already gotten Gaggled for it? As a HiTops leader, I wonder how many of the resources I’ve encouraged kids to refer to are no longer usable. Rape and sexual assault hotlines, the directions to the nearest clinic, crisis textlines—all of these are at risk of getting flagged. As a fellow student, I worry about how many silent battles have just been censored.
Neither Dr. Bragen nor Mr. Varela seemed concerned about this problem. For one, Dr. Bragen pointed out that what Gaggle deems flag-worthy can be edited by the district. And while that is a good thing, it still requires a select few sacrificial lambs to be Gaggled in the first place for the admin to even be aware that an edit needs to be made. Not to mention the fact that Gaggle had found itself in a controversy just a few years ago over the preset list of terms it flags. Gaggle was found to be flagging various keywords specifically related to the LGBTQ+ community, including “gay,” “lesbian,” “bisexual,” and “queer.” These keywords were officially removed in 2023. But that removal was preceded by dozens of young gay teens getting outed and put into dangerous home situations as a result of this platform’s ignorance. That raises the question: does the school district know every word on Gaggle’s predetermined list of keywords, or is it just…trusting the platform? And if it really does know every word, who is responsible for vetting the appropriateness of each? And if everything is this case-by-case, how much efficiency is Gaggle really introducing to this whole process? Finkelstein mentioned contacting teachers and keeping track of assignments to be better informed, but that just complicates the very process we’re trying to optimize.
And Gaggle doesn’t just close off teens from online resources. As you may recall, Gaggle also tracks all exchanges between students and teachers. When I asked if Dr. Bragen could see Gaggle preventing students from reaching out to trusted teachers, he said he couldn’t. “Nothing can take the place of the interaction of the teacher with the student in the classroom…that won’t be replaced or compromised.”
Something that I learned through my interview with Finkelstein that I found quite alarming is what Gaggle does with flagged emails. Instead of sending a screenshot, Gaggle fully redirects emails from the original recipient to the administrators. Finkelstein seemed to view this as a net good. “Instead of your friend getting it and maybe not knowing what to do, or not seeing it for a couple of days, it’ll be sent to one of us. So we can jump on it right away. We don’t want any email going unread.”
But is this not exactly what it means to replace the role of the teacher? People contact their peers and teachers in times of need because they trust them enough to be honest. If students know that contacting someone for help will push them into a bureaucratic process they don’t want to get involved in, they simply won’t reach out anymore. And that doesn’t even touch how much of a gross violation of a person’s autonomy it is to fully redirect an email from the original recipients. Even teenagers have the right to choose who hears about their suffering. And I’m incredibly upset that this fact, out of everything else I’ve learned, was never mentioned in any public communication to the school community.
Dr. Bragen presented an alternate perspective on the privacy matter that I found unique. “For some people, that may be the only way they’re comfortable communicating [these things]. As opposed to coming to a counselor, coming to a teacher, coming to a friend…they say it in an email to someone, and we then can get them help. If people know that’s out there, they may use that vehicle to get help in a manner they wouldn’t have before.”
While I can see his argument here, I question how aware it is. When students turn to online resources for help, it is typically explicitly because they want to keep their problems private. Gaggle directly contradicts this desire. The school is legally required to contact home if a student presents as a potential threat to themselves or others. For students with difficult home situations, Gaggle could invite even more unrest and fear into their lives.
When I asked how the administration plans on responding to students, and even parents, who don’t want the help being offered by the district in response to getting Gaggled, Mr. Varela’s response was also rather simple. “That happens aside from Gaggle…But at the end of the day, we’re charged with making sure that parents are aware of what we know about, what’s happening, and then we try and partner with them to make sure that the student gets the help they need.”
And he isn’t necessarily wrong. Students and parents alike have always gone out of their way to resist district intervention efforts. And there are a variety of reasons as to why that may be. But I would say that this is in no small part because families might view district intervention as an overreach of their boundaries and a violation of privacy. Gaggle just seems like a great way to make that lack of trust worse. And we know that the school is capable of keeping things hidden from parents. Transgender students, for example, can ask to keep name and pronoun changes secret from parents, in case they are closeted and afraid of what could happen to them. One could argue that having to turn to online resources alone is enough of a demonstration of a need for privacy by the same logic.
Schools like knowing stuff. Knowledge is sort of the central thesis of this place. But the truth is, we can’t know everything. We will never be able to catch everyone who’s doing something bad in this building. We won’t always notice the people around us who need our help. We just can’t control how much people show of who they truly are. What is definitely in our control is what we as a district show about our values and priorities. And when it comes to Gaggle, I don’t know if the picture it’s painting of our administration is particularly flattering.
Of course, we aren’t the only school that has adopted this platform. Dozens of other schools have as well. And dozens of other schools have had their own controversies surrounding it. Controversies that raise even more questions about how exactly Gaggle is going to impact daily life at South Brunswick.
In 2021, a 13-year-old boy in Minneapolis had written about a past suicide attempt with permission from his teacher for an English assignment. The essay itself was ultimately optimistic, detailing his recovery and the therapy he received. But Gaggle, of course, is not programmed to pick up keywords in context. So the essay got flagged anyway for containing content relating to suicidal ideation. He was called up and had to go through the motions of school mental health bureaucracy, entirely against his will.
These examples of intervention without purpose are problematic to me. Students who have struggled and are actively recovering from dark mental states shouldn’t feel afraid to talk about their growth. It’s only healthy to want to explore and break apart the trauma you’ve experienced in the past. Writing about your suffering makes it more digestible. I’ve written about some tough eras in my life for writing assignments in the past, if only because I trusted my teacher and felt comfortable feeling vulnerable. Why would we want to ruin that environment? And from personal experience, the whole process of talking with your counselor about your life can be almost humiliating or triggering at times. Our culture has made mental health a social taboo; there’s just no way around that fact. The sting of that discomfort is usually soothed by the comforting fact that the school is, at the end of the day, trying to properly help you. That soothing effect disappears when you don’t actually need the help they’re offering.
Of course, Gaggle isn’t just flawed for its ineffectiveness. In Lawrence, Kansas, a federal lawsuit was filed against Gaggle by the students of their local school district. They alleged that Gaggle had been weaponized by their school administration as a mode of censorship. Gaggle’s flagging system led to student journalism and artwork being intercepted before publication. Now, am I going to so boldly accuse South Brunswick of intending to use Gaggle for the same purposes? No. But I would like to point out that we’re already using Gaggle to monitor and track schoolwork. It is not a stretch of the imagination for the school to use it to monitor what students do for school-sanctioned extracurriculars, too.
Dr. Bragen did reassure me in our interview that he does not see Gaggle being used as a form of oversight in this manner. But I think the fact that this was a legitimate concern I had, that many students had, proves a broader point. Gaggle makes kids feel restricted. Too restricted. To the extent that they don’t feel comfortable freely expressing themselves.
I mean, every government class we’ve taken in this building since freshman year has driven Tinker v. Des Moines into our heads for a reason. Remember? Vietnam War, black armbands, an act of symbolic protest, kids were punished anyway, won the case? Yeah, that one. Students are allowed to weaponize their First Amendment rights, even if in opposition to the school, so long as they aren’t causing harm to others or disrupting the school environment. And students feeling as if the school is denying their ability to freely stand for their beliefs in a peaceful capacity, regardless of how legitimate that feeling is, will only lead to them defaulting to disruption.
Sorry, I’m still recovering from my AP US Government exam.
Speaking of AP US Government, actually, I had the chance to conduct a class-wide survey of my US Gov class on Gaggle. I asked a few fairly open-ended questions and kept things anonymous, just to gauge what student attitudes are. I extended this survey to my AP Comparative Government class the block after, too. The answers I got were enlightening.
When I asked if anyone felt protected by Gaggle, only one person in either of my classes said yes. 50% of my US Gov class and 65% of my Comp Gov class said that they felt anxious because of it. Only 9 people across both classes (about 20% of everyone surveyed) felt that they properly understood what Gaggle did. In a follow-up, these 9 people clarified that Gaggle had been explained to them by a teacher, and that they did not find administrative correspondence on the subject helpful.
I also asked both classes to give me a list of questions that they had about Gaggle and how it works. These questions ended up guiding my interviews. And, as much as I appreciate the conversations I did have with these administrators, I can’t help but feel like I wasn’t able to get my peers the answers they were really seeking. Everyone was very kind to me, but I sort of felt that nobody really understood the problem.
Mr. Varela, at one point, directly asked me, “What are your classmates afraid of?”
I didn’t really know how to articulate myself that well during the interview itself. I ended up simply saying that people are just worried about their privacy and what they’re able to keep to themselves, mentioning my earlier point about Gaggle complicating the healing process.
But I think the problem goes beyond just that.
People are confused by Gaggle. They’re creeped out. They don’t fully understand it, they feel like nobody is properly explaining it, and they’re terrified they’re going to get in trouble for something they didn’t do or lose access to past online sources of refuge. And I completely understand that! I was on edge when it was first introduced, too. What if my absurdist creative writing horror story got flagged? Or searches for a psychology project? Yeah, obviously, I know most likely guidance would be sympathetic and let me go, but that’s still not a gamble anyone would want to make.
I want to give our district’s administrative team the benefit of the doubt. I know they’re just looking out for us. But Gaggle just seems to have bad optics. And the rollout of this new platform has left students wanting. Beyond Mr. Varela’s email and brief commentary from Dr. Bragen at the April 16th board meeting, students haven’t been given any other direct communication on Gaggle. In fact, as of June 7th, the date I am writing this specific sentence, there has still yet to be any additional follow-up made by the district on Gaggle. The April 23rd School Board meeting was focused on celebrating the 2025-2026 Educator and Educator Support Persons of the Year and discussing redistricting. Both important and notable, of course, but something as significant as Gaggle should’ve been discussed in more depth. This platform seems as if it has come out of nowhere with the sole purpose of disrupting our lives. During AP prep week, no less!
Arguably, the most frustrating and alarming part of this whole situation is how little anyone knows about it. It is absurd how many people I’ve emailed seeking information who merely referred me to people higher up than them. One of the people I was repeatedly referred to was Sharon Johnson, our Director of Technology. When I asked her for an interview, she referred me to Dr. Bragen instead, saying that “He can provide the most comprehensive and authoritative perspective on [this initiative’s] purpose, adoption, and use of the Gaggle platform.” Being that he seems to be the one responsible for spearheading this project, I can sort of understand that. But in the same breath, I feel like our Director of Technology should have also been able to give me the responses I sought, and I really question why she wasn’t. I’m not expecting everyone to be fully briefed and knowledgeable about Gaggle and all that comes with it, but I think it is reasonable for a student to want information on a platform that is tracking their every digital movement to be readily accessible. I should not need to sit down with the superintendent to know what I now know; I should’ve been told all this in advance. Way in advance.
It was only after speaking with Mrs. Finkelstein that I learned that implementation followed a sort of top-down approach, which could explain why some people were less knowledgeable than others. In our interview, Mrs Finkelstein had said that Gaggle started as a central office decision that eventually came down to the high school. Before publication, she further clarified that the central office “went through their vetting process to determine if Gaggle would be an appropriate investment in student safety and prevention, and determined that this program would be worth implementing at the building levels. It was then shared with other district administration.”
I understand that communication is a two-way street, of course, and people should be putting in the effort to get more involved. But I’d argue district administrators have a duty to maintain constant and reliable dialogue with the people they’re responsible for. They should send out emails about important decisions like this way earlier. Certain staff Professional Development sessions could’ve been replaced with training and conversation with staff over what adopting Gaggle will mean for the classroom. They could’ve utilized VTN or the various other student organizations we have, including the student government. Whatever it takes, just reach out to us! If the adoption of Gaggle had been televised with as much detail as our usual spirit week schedule, much of the controversy here could’ve been avoided.
Remember, we aren’t the only school affected by this new program. The elementary schools and middle schools are also now using Gaggle and its flagging system. And it seems that the district has essentially sent the responsibility of explaining both Gaggle itself and what exactly it is tracking to the younger grades back to the parents. Who, clearly, have not been fully educated on either topic. I had the chance to talk to a neighboring couple with a son in one of our elementary schools about this. Both of them opened up their Gmail while on a call with me to search for any email announcing the implementation of Gaggle in our district. Neither found anything. I had to explain what the platform was to them personally. They didn’t seem thrilled.
When I presented these criticisms to Mr. Varela and Dr. Bragen, I got two very telling responses. Mr. Varela pointed out that he had made an effort to share all the information that he viewed as pertinent to students when he could. And that is true, I don’t want to discount the fact that his email did highlight a lot of key elements of how Gaggle works. It’s just that it was released the same week Gaggle was introduced, giving students little time to ask questions or voice concerns. And since then, no additional information has been sent out clarifying any of the many, many questions students have surrounding it.
Mr. Varela had made a point during our interview about the accessibility of information about Gaggle on the internet. But when you search up Gaggle, most of your top results are articles discussing some of the cases I mentioned above and panicked Reddit posts from parents and students alike, referring to it as proper “spyware.” That’s bound to cause more harm than good.
He did ask me, directly, what he could clarify for students that we wanted to know. And I’m sure he wants to be helpful and make things clearer for us now. I just wish that effort had been made earlier.
Dr. Bragen had a slightly different angle. “Communication is normally the problem,” he said. “Somewhere, there is always a breakdown in getting the information out and communicating it to everyone. Not just to the end users of the software, but to the students, to the faculty, to the parents, to the larger community.”
It became clear as we talked that part of the lack of deeper communication on the part of our administrative staff was for the sake of “efficiency.”
“Part of the problem was rolling something out quickly,” Bragen added. “We could either overcommunicate it and delay it until next year, or we could do it quickly and deal with these issues as they arise. And we chose the latter because we thought it was more appropriate to go faster and sacrifice some of the communication in order to help someone or prevent a tragedy.”’
And yeah, they certainly moved fast. I asked a few questions to get a better picture of how things progressed behind the scenes on Dr. Bragen’s end, and his responses were enlightening. Gaggle was first mentioned in our district during a conversation between Dr. Bragen and elementary school principals. He asked if we had any sort of monitoring service in our district, having been inspired by his old district in Edison, which also used Gaggle.
“We went pretty quickly,” recounts Dr. Bragen. “We had that conversation with the elementary principals probably in January, and we started looking into putting it in place in February, and I want to say it went live in April. That was a pretty fast turnaround.”
Impressive speed, sure, but I don’t view it as anything to applaud. Gaggle was a rush job. A very starry-eyed, noble rush job, but a rush job nonetheless. One that was funded using the money of the hardworking families living in this district, who were left in the dark on the entire process.
Mr. Varela, Mrs. Finkelstein, and Dr. Bragen all talked about wanting to protect kids and prevent a “tragedy,” but there hasn’t been any significant event recently that would make Gaggle a necessary measure. It’s wonderful that there have been cases where Gaggle resulted in necessary intervention, truly, but we have no reason to believe that rushing this process was needed in the end. Varela and Finkelstein themselves both said that they’ve always operated 24/7 to respond to student needs, and that the actual process of calling students up and talking through things with them hasn’t changed that much. It’s clear we’ve had a handle on student well-being for a while now. We’re creating a false dichotomy between doing things right and saving people.
And the presumption that all communication is immediately destined to cause conflict and “breakdowns” is flawed. Good communication prevents conflict; that’s what it is designed to do. This sort of disregard for the thoughts and opinions of the people is what leads to mistrust between the school board, school administrators, and the general public. And I get the sense that lack of trust is going to grow more and more now that STOPit is getting introduced soon.
Oh, I’m sorry, do you not know what STOPit is?
Well, it’s getting implemented pretty soon. And, I mean, the school district is paying for it with your taxpayer dollars, so I sort of assumed…
I’m kidding, I’m aware that you probably don’t know about STOPit. Apparently, only staff have received any sort of notification about it in advance. The only other communication has been via board meeting, which is commendable and valuable, of course. But neither students nor parents have received any direct updates on what STOPit is whatsoever. When will we? Presumably, the week it’s put in place, if the precedent set by Gaggle is anything to go by.
But, okay, let’s talk STOPit. According to its website, STOPit is in many ways similar to Gaggle. Schools and workplaces sign contracts with it to get solutions on how to solve an assorted array of social ills, such as bullying, isolation, and acts of violence. For K-12 schools, STOPit has developed the Lightspeed STOPit app. This app is effectively designed to streamline reporting systems that already exist in most schools. It advertises optimizing communication by allowing people to privately message administrators, as well as allowing for anonymous tips to be sent out, which can include photographic or video evidence. Tips are monitored by “incident response specialists” who vet each one, just to ensure the content being sent out is appropriate. It also apparently helps coordinate responses when emergencies arise. Everyone in the school is given direct access to an anonymous Crisis Text Line to help them calm down if they need help. The app is free to download, though the district still has to pay $250 annually for the implementation of the network itself.
The staff email that was sent out mentioned that teachers will need to “encourage everyone in the school community to download the Lightspeed STOPit app” and “guide students in using the app.” During our interview, Dr. Bragen said that students will have to download the app on their laptops, in accordance with NJ’s new statewide school phone ban beginning next year. So far, it doesn’t seem like there will be opportunities for students to opt out of using it. I wonder if using the Crisis Text Line could set off Gaggle, since students would likely have to sign up with their school emails in order to be part of the network, and would largely be operating on school Wi-Fi. But other than that, its operations don’t seem that bizarre to me.
Now, paradoxically, Lightspeed STOPit doesn’t seem that bad an addition on its own. I can see the merit in using a more efficient reporting system that eases the burden teachers have when it comes to monitoring student well-being in their classrooms. It’s the fact that it is being tacked on after the establishment of Gaggle that peeves me. If Gaggle ends up working how it’s intended, is Lightspeed not effectively useless? What would incentivize students to even use Lightspeed? Students scorn Gaggle’s already infamous flagging system as spyware. Lightspeed is practically destined to be cursed forever as a snitch network. Gaggle has started to cultivate a culture of secrecy that inhibits Lightspeed from functioning as intended. Nobody is going to rat out their peers, especially when they already feel like the school is being too nosy.
And, once again, I am struck with annoyance over the fact that it hasn’t even been passively introduced to students. I get that proper implementation may be off in the future, but students deserve a bit of transparency, especially in the wake of just how little they were given in terms of information about Gaggle. Dr. Bragen was very open with me about the platform when I mentioned it to him, yet I didn’t get any real insights on how they plan on rolling it out. And, really, I shouldn’t have had to ask in the first place.
I also don’t want to dance around the fact that our school has struggled with funding for a good while now. So it stings to see the school spending so much money on programs that are so heavily contested and, quite frankly, seem almost useless. Wayfinder (the platform providing our SEL curriculum) and Gaggle, for example, were each estimated at an annual cost of around $40,000 in my email exchanges with Dr. Bragen. All this for student mental health and well-being, and yet, the student body somehow seems more irritated than ever before.
Dr. Bragen mentioned that a big focus he came into the district with was finding ways to manage our infamously finicky budget. These additional costs have been justified by various spending cuts, which have earned their own criticisms. “We’ve looked for reducing inefficiencies in some other areas, like our health center maintenance…that we believe will save us at least 2 million, if not more.”
The “health center maintenance” he’s referring to was actually something I had planned on asking about. The school under Scott Feder, our past superintendent, had a contract with an organization called Partnership Health Centers to create a clinic to be used for staff and their family members. In our interview, Dr. Bragen reported a cost of around $3.2 million a year, with $900,000 sent directly to Integrity Health (Partnership’s parent company) for management costs. Just 3-ish years after establishing this program, the school has decided to replace it with a similar program called Family First. This situation is its own can of worms, filled with a lot of nuances that we simply can’t dwell on here. What is relevant is the fact that Dr. Bragen made a point to meet with staff multiple times to discuss the change. That shows that our district is capable of taking the right steps to, at the very least, explain why the decisions it’s making are being made. They just haven’t properly done so with Gaggle, or STOPit, for that matter.
And that question brings me to my central point: Actually, why are we doing any of this? Why are we dumping money on these surveillance programs? What do we actually need Gaggle for? What do we need Wayfinder and STOPit for? What are we so willing to sacrifice the level of comfort our students and staff have in this building for? And why are these programs being executed so…shadily? Why aren’t these big decisions more public? Aren’t they sort of shooting themselves in the foot by acting so secretively?
Nobody seems to know anything. And prior to this article, those who do aren’t sufficiently communicating with the population they’re making these big decisions for. I had to search through the records of so many Board of Ed meetings to write this article. Guys, I had like…3 whole other articles I put on hold just to collect enough information to write this specific piece. I feel sort of like that one It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia meme with the red string.
The purpose of this article was to advocate for more transparency from the administration while still giving them a chance to speak up and defend themselves from all the criticism they received. Dr. Bragen himself directly referenced my interview with him as a way for him to communicate better with the school population. But why did I have to be the one to initiate that conversation? Why did the district administration rely on the journalism of one student to bridge a clear divide between them and the school community? That, to me, is the real heart of the issue.
Look, I am not so immature as to paint the Board of Ed and the district administration as a whole as uncaring. Again, these people don’t have ill intent. I do think, however, they have consistently made controversial decisions without properly considering and communicating with the people who are most affected by them. And, as a result, they’ve lost a lot of goodwill and have created a profoundly uncomfortable school environment for all of us.
And that is the real cost of Gaggle.
