Court authorities here will be able to track students with a history of skipping school under a new program requiring them to wear ankle bracelets with Global Positioning System monitoring.
But at least one group is worried the ankle bracelets will infringe on students' privacy.
Linda Penn, a Bexar County justice of the peace, said she anticipates that about 50 students from four San Antonio-area school districts _ likely to be mostly high schoolers _ will wear the anklets during the six-month pilot program announced Friday. She said the time the students wear the anklets will be decided on a case-by-case basis.
"We are at a critical point in our time where we can either educate or incarcerate," Penn said, linking truancy with juvenile delinquency and later criminal activity. "We can teach them now or run the risk of possible incarceration later on in life. I don't want to see the latter."
| Newsletter signup | Send us your ideas