Texas School District Bans GPS Device

KTVT-TV in Dallas reports:

An Arlington family says the school district will not allow a six-year-old with autism to take a life-saving device to school. The battle began back in February. The CBS 11 I-Team got involved this week. The little girl heads back to school in one week. A national autism organization and a local lawmaker are also involved.

Coral loves to paint, play, and learn like most six-year-olds.   She also likes to wander like most children with autism.

“When Coral is outside she runs,” says her grandmother Carol Christian.

Coral rode the bus to Pope Elementary last year and her grandmother worried that she would wander from school.  So, the family bought her a GPS tracking device.

“The tracker simply tracks where Coral is at every five minutes throughout the day.”

Christian says the tracker alerts the family if Coral goes outside of a specific zone.  The remote stayed in coral’s backpack until March.

“All of a sudden we get an email at home telling us they had removed the GPS tracker from her backpack…that it was against district policy,” explained Christian.