Video Surveillance

Video Surveillance in the School Setting

In addition to monitoring student behavior, the use of video camera surveillance technology is increasingly being used by school officials to assist in the evaluation of teacher and school staff job performance. In Roberts v. Houston Independent School District (1990), for example, an appellate court in Texas ruled that school officials did not violate a dismissed teacher's expectation of privacy by videotaping her classroom teaching performance. In general, the videotaping of a teacher's classroom teaching is legally permissible when used as an assessment tool in evaluating teaching performance.

In another case, Crist v. Alpine Union School District (2005), an appellate court in California found that officials did not violate the privacy rights of a school employee when they secretly placed video cameras in a shared office space among three employees. The cameras were placed secretly in the office in an effort to acquire visual evidence that one of the school employees was gaining unauthorized computer access. Here, the court held that the camera surveillance was permissible because school board officials had a legitimate reason for using the video surveillance that outweighed the employees' privacy rights.

Video Surveillance with Audio Capacity

Collecting audio data is generally prohibited under Title I of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (2002). However, “silent video surveillance,” or video surveillance without sound, is not covered under Title I of the act. Given recent technological advances in video surveillance, most modern video cameras have a zoom function that is often used as a substitute for audio communications.

Video Surveillance as an Educational Record

Under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), parents or legal guardians have the legal right to “inspect and review the educational records of their children.” FERPA defines an educational record as “those records, files, documents, and other material which contain information directly related to a student.”

Pursuant to FERPA, parents and legal guardians are usually legally entitled to access to videotapes of their children taken in a school setting. Even so, FERPA identifies five exceptions to the definition of [Page 871]educational records. Consequently, parents and legal guardians are usually not entitled to videotapes of their children of the following types:

• Records maintained by supervisory personnel
• Records maintained by administrative personnel
• Records maintained by instructional personnel
• Records maintained by a physician, psychiatrist, psychologist, or other recognized professionals
• Records maintained by law enforcement officers if the videotaping was conducted for law enforcement

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