well today marks one year since the Uvalde Texas school massacre where 19 students and two teachers were killed by a gunman the rise of school shootings across the U.S has spurred a push for more safety measures and in Newark District leaders are planning to use artificial intelligence in an elaborate new security system for the public schools it would go Way Beyond traditional systems currently being used in most districts and that's got community Advocates concerned about student and staff privacy along with over policing Jesse Gomez reported the story for chalk beat Newark and joins me to explain Jesse Gomez great to get a chance to talk to you this reporting was excellent tell me first what this security system entails people hear Ai and it really our minds run wild yeah absolutely now Newark Public Schools plans to replace its outdated camera system with what they're calling the Next Generation surveillance platform so specifically they're looking to replace uh their outdated camera system and install more than 7 000 cameras district-wide which is roughly one for every five students um now what's different about this specific system is that Newark is looking to include cameras with artificial intelligence capabilities to recognize people and objects like cars or guns and provide higher quality Imaging something that Newark has been seeing has been lacking for decades now um the district also said that their current security system is inefficient because it doesn't have enough storage and it doesn't have remote access to live feeds which apparently is a problem for districts like Newark um so what's important to note though is that the district hasn't launched its request proposal process which means it doesn't know what company is going to purchase these cameras from but they've been very clear that they intent is to purchase cameras with these artificial intelligence cameras artificial intelligence features which experts and Advocates are raising concerned about yeah I mean we know through your reporting that the teachers union appears to be behind this with some caveats what are the main concerns from parents and folks who actually know how this technology works well experts are sounding the alarms basically they're saying that uh the systems like these could potentially pose problems uh sometimes oftentimes facial recognition features don't work as well on darker skin tones but we do know that artificial intelligence and these Technologies are advancing pretty rapidly um so that could be remedied pretty quickly just depending on how advanced and how quickly Technologies um you know progress but there's also concern that Advocates are raising especially over policing or over policing of students some Advocates say that this could lead to further monitoring and maybe even penalizing and punishing students for incidents that happen on school grounds since these technologies have the capability of recognizing faces keeping logs of faces and basically pulling them up you know if a student appears on you know in one school you know they could pop up their their faith through these systems and kind of see where where the space pops up in other District buildings um so there's a lot of concerns on how the Techno technology can be used or how perhaps how it could be misused if not properly vetted and there's also another component that experts and Advocates are raising their alarms over which is oversight at the state and local level there's no oversight of you know on how these Technologies are implemented in schools and we are starting to see them all emerging a lot more especially in you know in the wake of school shootings and concerns over student safety these are all really big problems that Advocates and experts say need to be addressed before you know these Technologies are implemented in schools yeah I mean has the legislature taken any stance on this is there anything currently in law that would set some parameters for how this can be carried out so for my story I reached out to Sunday Majority Leader through Cerise and Senate education committee sheriff and gopal and they both declined to comment on just security regulations or security technology regulations especially those that are emerging in schools so at the state level we we don't see any traction on this yet but potentially maybe in the future as more and more of these you know AI capabilities enter and emerge in schools and you know perhaps as we start seeing the effects on the student population we might start seeing some regulation Jesse Gomez with chalk beat Newark for us thank you so much Jesse