Teacher Discovers Hidden Cameras in Classroom Ceiling

Saturday, February 21, 1998
Valley Edition
Section: Metro
Page: B-4

Teacher Discovers Secret Video Camera in Kindergarten Class;
Education: Tape system was installed without teachers' knowledge, union charges.;

By: KARIMA A. HAYNES
TIMES STAFF WRITER

It was a typical day in kindergarten at Mesquite Elementary School. The teacher was overseeing her young charges, who were busily involved in various activities.
Then she happened to notice extra wires snaking up an interior classroom wall and disappearing above a ceiling tile.
Curious, the teacher called a male colleague, who climbed a ladder and found the wire hooked up to a video recorder that was taping the activities in that room and another kindergarten class nearby.
So began the tempest over 16 surveillance cameras bought by Palmdale School District Supt. Nancy Smith, who apparently made the $12,000 expenditure without school board approval and then installed the equipment without telling teachers and parents, union officials charge.

The discovery was made in August, but the unorthodox purchase did not become public until Feb. 3, when members of the Palmdale Elementary Teachers Assn. confronted Smith at a school board meeting. Armed with the purchase orders that were made out for fire equipment instead of surveillance cameras, the union officials launched their latest salvo in a continuing war with the superintendent.

The resulting uproar has been chronicled in several local newspaper stories and stirred debate on talk radio. A spokeswoman for Smith said the district hooked up the cameras--which were removed in August--hoping to catch a computer thief or tagger. Instead, the cameras may have caught a couple of women elementary school teachers changing their clothes for an after-school workout.

"Originally, there were concerns about the cameras being in the classroom and why," union President Kris Clarke said. "Then the kindergarten teachers were upset because they remembered they had changed clothes in the classrooms."

No union or school official on Friday acknowledged seeing partially clad women on any of the tapes they viewed. They said it was possible the Mesquite teachers had been captured on video changing clothes, but that the images may have been taped over when the tape began a new 24-hour cycle.

The cameras were installed in schools last spring and were programmed to run from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., school officials said. When school let out for summer vacation, cameras at closed schools ran for 24 hours on a continuous loop.

At the start of the current school year, maintenance workers were to have reset to the original program, school officials said.

"Maintenance forgot to go and change the time on the video camera at Mesquite," said Diana Beard-Williams, a school district spokeswoman. "It never occurred to us to double-check. The camera was running 24 hours instead of only in the evening. As soon as we found out, the superintendent immediately dispatched someone there to take care of the situation."

"The cameras were put in because of the extensive amount of theft and vandalism in the district," Beard-Williams said. "It had nothing to do with monitoring teachers, but everything to do with protecting property."

Still, union officials maintain the cameras shouldn't have been in the classroom in the first place without teachers' and parents' knowledge. They also question why the equipment was purchased without board approval. "We have been trying to build a trusting relationship with the board, and now we feel betrayed and deceived," Clark said.

At a school board meeting Tuesday, Smith said the purchase and installation of the equipment was kept secret because district officials did not want to tip off would-be thieves.