A surveillance tech company asserting that they know better, based on 'big data'. Shocking.

The family has proof of residence (which is its own absurdity we won't discuss), and this third party can arbitrarily override that based on a black box argument.

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scottlamb 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> The family has proof of residence (which is its own absurdity we won't discuss), and this third party can arbitrarily override that based on a black box argument.

Doesn't the family have a very straightforward libel claim against the third party? That the car was parked elsewhere may be true. "Although you are the owner on record of a house in our district boundaries, your license plate recognition shows that is not the place where you reside" is a statement the family can disprove in court (to a civil standard) and demonstrate has financially damaged them ("her daughter is currently attending a private school 45 minutes away from her home"). If that statement came from the third party (rather than the school district misinterpreting the raw data themselves), the family will win. The straightforward financial damages (let alone anything pain / suffering / punitive damages) likely exceed the company's payment from the school district ("a total of $41,904 for a 36-month-long contract"). It wouldn't take many of these claims before the company becomes insolvent, and good riddance.

I'd also expect them to win a lawsuit against the school district for falsely denying the basic right of education. Perhaps the individual school administrator also for libel. With any luck, a total legal bloodbath that warns any other school districts away from this conduct.

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landl0rd 2 hours ago | parent [-]

That depends if the third party makes the claim of non-residence and how they make it, and if they disclaim warranty and reliance. I can show you a site with some graphs and data of who is parked where and when and how often; I doubt they're directly saying, "This person definitely doesn't live at this residence, so deny her child entry."

	▲	scottlamb 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		That distinction is what I was getting at with "if that statement came from the third party (rather than the school district misinterpreting the raw data themselves)". If the company just provided the raw data, they may be in better legal shape. But I'd say either they or the school administrator libeled the family. Maybe both. (Of course, I'm not a lawyer.) Even if the company did provide only the raw data, I wonder if libel is somehow implied in its contracted/intended use. And I'm really hoping for the legal bloodbath outcome, because this is unconscionable. The family may not have time or money to pursue this, but there are lawyers who work on contingency or even pro bono, including the ACLU.
	▲	Retric 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		If they disclaim warranty and reliance that’s relevant to the person they are selling data to, but not to the harmed party.

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binsquare 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yep, completely absurd but I'd also add that both the tech company and the school gov deserves equal shame here given there's proof of residence.

I can't imagine why highly paid school admin wouldn't correct an obvious mistake.

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echelon_musk 4 hours ago | parent [-]

> highly paid school admin

I would not have expected a school administrator to be highly paid. What kind of salary are we talking about here?

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hrimfaxi 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Is 500k highly paid? https://www.illinoispolicy.org/see-what-your-illinois-school...

It's the teachers that are shafted, not the admin/manager class.

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echelon_musk 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That's mind blowing to me. I'd imagine they out earn a significant percentage of HN posters!

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ceejayoz 3 hours ago | parent [-]

They're CEOs of fairly large organizations, often managing thousands of employees and budgets of hundreds of millions of dollars.

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shrubble 3 hours ago | parent [-]

That’s spending that is all on autopilot; how much time does any CEO spend on payroll? Approximately zero.

	▲	ceejayoz 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		They aren't being paid the big bucks to sign off on a payroll run. They're being paid to manage the parts of the organizations that do that sort of thing, among others.

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chaps 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

....yes, half a million dollars per year is highly paid.

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criddell 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

In Texas, the superintendent of the big school districts all make around $400k.

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ceejayoz 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Yeah, but a good portion of that is making sure they keep the football team going.

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criddell 3 hours ago | parent [-]

In the Dolton school district (Chicago suburb), their superintendent makes $530k / year. Is that for the football team?

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ceejayoz 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Having never heard of Dolton before, I certainly can't speak to their specifics. School systems can be pretty huge orgs requiring significant management expertise; no one blinks an eye when a CEO gets pay for similar responsibilities.

I've heard enough about Texas's high school football culture and the pressures on administrators over it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eagle_Stadium_(Allen,_Texas) for example.

	▲	criddell 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		My kids went to a big football high school in Texas and it wouldn't surprise me if the admins there felt a lot of pressure around football. It generated a lot of money for the district and proceeds funded a lot of the arts programs (especially marching band which was huge).
	▲	3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		[deleted]

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HexPhantom 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The irony is that the system might technically be "correct" about where the car was seen overnight, but that still doesn't prove anything about where the family actually lives

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lotsofpulp 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

In this case, I would think residence is irrelevant, considering this person is paying property tax that pays for this school and land records can easily prove this.

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ceejayoz 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The thing they're trying to combat is people claiming residency in a better school district. We had a case here where the parents were driving their kid to grandma's so the kid could go to school there instead of in a bad local school.

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john_strinlai 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

she owns and pays for a home in the school district. the school knows and admits this.

if she didnt, i would (sort of) agree. but she does.

	▲	ceejayoz 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yes. I'm saying there's a legit interest in combatting a real challenge. This is a false positive and a stupid bureaucratic hole of the school's own creation.

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StingyJelly 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

So what? Grandma's paying taxes there.

Real solution is to loosen regulations on private schools and provide equivalent tax return to parents who choose private over public.

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ceejayoz 4 hours ago | parent [-]

> So what? Grandma's paying taxes there.

But the parents aren't, and grandma's tax contribution may have already gone towards funding the parents. The system's structured with local revenue; letting people change their locality too easily messes with that structure a lot.

(I pay, for example, about $3k in school taxes annually, but I have two kids in a $21k/year district. If they have kids, I may be still paying for their education, let alone the grandkids.)

> Real solution is to loosen regulations on private schools and provide equivalent tax return to parents who choose private over public.

Yeah, privatization always results in better results and zero scammy abuses of the system.

(One hopes the /s can go unsaid.)

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nonameiguess 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Feels like now we're getting into "falsehoods programmers believe about family." My cousin effectively lived with us when he was a kid and went to school in the district for our house, not his mom's. My niece was raised jointly by my sister and my parents, but my sister's housing situation was so unstable she lived with my parents more often, and went to school in that district as well. What exactly do they even do if a parent has no stable housing at all? Make the kid change schools every month?

	▲	ceejayoz 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> Feels like now we're getting into "falsehoods programmers believe about family." Sure, but that's why a level of human intervention with a touch of empathy is required for cases like this one and the unhoused example.

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dylan604 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The way you've written this is a bit misleading. I can own undeveloped property in a school district and pay the property taxes for it, but it's a drop in the bucket compared to someone owning a home in that district. The residency requirement would mean you're paying enough property tax since you've clearly developed the property if you are living there.

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lotsofpulp 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Then the government should advertise an explicit minimum amount of tax paid annually in order to register for the school, or switch property tax to land value tax only.

	▲	dylan604 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		The residency requirement is that minimum. It's not a minimum in monetary limits. It's a minimum that you have to actually live there. The fact you are living there means you are paying a higher tax amount than for an undeveloped lot. There's a difference on having a house on a lot vs just some field. You have some skin in the game as they say compared to just owning land while living somewhere else completely.

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kitsune1 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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