ORLANDO, Fla. – Orange County Public Schools will change its student absence notification system following the death of 13-year-old Madeline Soto.
According to investigators, Soto’s mother said she didn’t learn the girl wasn’t in class until she received an automated notification near the end of the school day.
As a result, the district began looking into making changes to its system.
Superintendent Maria Vazquez announced the upcoming changes during a Tuesday night meeting.
“It really was a lot more complicated than I think any of us realized and so I will be honest, I did not expect we would have a solution in place,” said Teresa Jacobs, OCPS chair.
The changes are expected to give parents an additional call at the start of the school day to notify them of their child’s absence.
Parents will still receive a call at the end of the day, too, though the district is also working to allow parents to see whether their child was marked absent in the online school portal.
The additional notifications are set to kick off on April 8, and specific times will be shared after spring break, Vazquez explained.
News 6 spoke to former Orlando Police Chief Orlando Rolon to get his thoughts on the new policy.
“I think it’s a great move by the Orange County school system, I think the fact technology enables any entities to be able to communicate quicker and more efficiently, and applying this layer to their communications system with the parents is an excellent move,” Rolon said.
Rolon said his family uses Life360 to keep track of each other.
“I’ll use my dad as an example, he’s 85 years old,” Rolon said. “We have an application called Life360 that allows for us to stay connected so that we know where we are at any given time and it’s not because it’s an invasion of privacy, it’s more so to ensure that if my dad needs us, or that if we need my dad, we can track each other.”
News 6 also spoke to tech expert Chris Hadnagy, aka, the Human Hacker. He said his family also uses Life360.
“Since I’m an Android user and my daughter is an Apple user, we used Life360 and we did it non-invasively,” Hadnagy said. “So when I talked to her it was ‘OK I want this on your phone so you can track me, and I can track you.”
Hadnagy said he and his daughter also created a safe word as a way to immediately let the other person know they’re in trouble.
“If she ever sent me a text with that word, and she knew we talked about it no joking, this cannot ever be a joke, like if you send that to me I’m going to get your last location and I’m going to be there in minutes,” Hadnagy said.
As far as kids who don’t have cell phones, Hadnagy had a few ideas.
“There are smartwatches that also have GPS trackers in them, there are devices that are specifically for small children that are GPS trackers,” Hadnagy said. “They are what looks like a tile, and they can go in your daughter’s or son’s backpack and then you have an app on your phone, and they can tell you where they are at all times. "
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