Written by Grace Xia and Elizabeth van Blommestein.
On March 1, the San Mateo Union High School District started using a paid, premium version of Bark for Schools, a school safety company that searches for and logs phrases linked to potential hazards to supervise student activity on Google Workplace accounts.
Bark was implemented to address several issues including concerns surrounding the decrease in in-person interactions with peers and staff and the increase in cyberbullying and hate speech-related incidents within the SMUHSD. The grand jury report released on Sept. 24 detailed the need for reform following an investigation of school hate incidents. The software has the ability to filter for phrases related to bullying, depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, drug and alcohol abuse, hate speech, risky contact, self-harm, sextortion (sexual blackmail) or sexual content, violence, body image issues, dangerous organizations, profanity and weapons in both English and Spanish. Bark administrators are also able to contact the SMUHSD about severe cases.
“Since the pandemic, we have surged past our student hospitalizations from 2019 and 2020,” said SMUHSD Manager of Mental Health Programs April Torres. “We had a certain amount of student [hospitalizations] in our first semester of 2020. We surpassed that for a whole year in one semester, along with [Child Protective Services] reports, and some other reporting issues. We’ve definitely seen an uptick in harm to self or others … definitely a lot of anxiety, a lot of depression, isolation, a lot of family issues that have really been exacerbated because they’re all home or [because] people lose their jobs … or are sick.”
“At this rate, we’re talking about 1% of the student population potentially being affected”
While Bark is currently in its pilot phase, it has already caught incidents of abuse, self-harm and cyberbullying.
“At this rate, we’re talking about 1% of the student population potentially being affected, meaning that we’re going to follow up with them,” said SMUHSD Director of Student Services Don Scatena. “We’re probably talking about 90 in a year … that we would not have found out about [without Bark]. I would say that’s probably a worthwhile investment for the district.”
The SMUHSD previously monitored student Chromebooks with GoGuardian, a software that provided teachers access to the sites students viewed, in addition to their SMUHSD Google Workplaces. In light of the software’s invasiveness, the SMUHSD switched to Bark.
“We felt like [GoGuardian] gave the teachers too much visibility into what the students were doing,” Scatena said. “The difference is that [GoGuardian] was more for instructional purposes. [Bark] is strictly for safety purposes.”
Bark operates through sending an alert to an administrator each time a potentially harmful combination of words is caught in Google applications associated with a student’s Google Workplace, such as Google Documents, Sheets, Slides, Keep, Hangouts, emails, comments and images. The administrator is able to view the context in which the phrase is found as well as the name of the student behind it. Based on the situation, administrators are able to determine whether the alert is a cause for concern.
Bark uses artificial intelligence to improve its accuracy when analyzing phrases. If the alert indicates abuse or mental health issues, the student may be connected with a wellness counselor or provided other mental health services.
In the case that a student partakes in cyberbullying, usage of hate speech or other hurtful actions, they may face disciplinary consequences, including police involvement, if the infraction is severe enough. The SMUHSD’s responses would follow the California Education Code, a set of laws related to California’s public schools.
“One of the most common ways that a teacher finds out about a student’s issues at home … is when they write about themselves,” Scatena said. “If it was written on paper, the teacher would have turned [it] over to the administration if there was something of concern.”
Despite the software’s extensive capabilities, most alerts are not serious enough to warrant a response. Since its implementation, Bark has reviewed 2.1 million records and sent 44 severe alerts across multiple areas, with two requiring emergency responses. Furthermore, out of the 27 alerts of severe profanity Bark caught, only four were moved on to the administration.
“It … was adopted pretty quickly, so we haven’t been able to respond as quickly as we would have liked to”
With a price point of about $2,000 for the remainder of the spring semester and a future annual subscription price of about $7,500, the SMUHSD plans to use the pilot phase to determine whether Bark will continue being used in the fall.
“[We] will probably [send] a survey to our administrative teams or wellness counseling teams to find out if they felt like the use of such a platform helped ensure the safety of the campus better [than before], or [if it was] worse,” Scatena said. “Would these incidents [caught by Bark have] come to light if Bark didn’t exist? If the answer’s ‘No, we wouldn’t have known about it,’ and we had 100 incidents that we followed up on, then you could start to see that [it’s] something of value.”
Aragon administrators hope to increase awareness about Bark’s implementation for students who return to school.
“‘I’m hoping to include something [about Bark] in our back to school training for students as they’re coming back … in the next couple of days just to say, ‘Hey, don’t use hate speech in any of your school accounts, because we’re using this other software,’” said Aragon Principal Valerie Arbizu. “Keep in mind that we’re still in the pilot implementation phase of this. It came up and was adopted pretty quickly, so we haven’t been able to respond as quickly as we would have liked to.”
Arbizu cautions students against using their SMUHSD accounts to inadvertently disclose private or risky content.
“Students need to know that this works in a similar fashion to what some adults are working through with their businesses, where you have to think of the accounts that you have attached to the school as a school account, and not a personal account,” Arbizu said. “Be aware of what you’re using school-based Google accounts for. If there’s anything that you wouldn’t want forwarded to somebody, then maybe it’s not the best use of [your school] account.”
