School isn't a democracy
School boards are elected.
Plus as a publicly funded, attendance is essentially mandatory (private and homeschooling alternatives aside), AND it involves children.
It should be held to the highest privacy standards.
A public school absolutely should NOT be loading advertising companies with profiles of our children. As a parent and as a taxpayer I am against it on both fronts.
I absolutely should have some say in whether my kids are served up to google.
And schools are generally pretty upfront and careful. I get asked for permission for pictures of our kids to appear on the school website (declined). We had to sign permission for our kids to be setup on Office 365 (as that's what their school is trying it out instead of g-apps). After a lot of consideration we elected to allow it, but monitor the kids on it closely, and are using it as a 'teaching opportunity'. But we could have declined it.
I do know of some parents who have hyper stances against their kid using the internet etc; and as far as I know the schools have always made allowances to accomodate these. Just as they allow parents to opt kids out of sex-ed, biology dissections, field trips, and any other topics that a subset of parents may find objectionable.
Your assertion that schools can ram google or anything else down our throats and we can only say, "thank you sir, please, can i have some more?" or pull our kids out of school entirely is just ridiculous.
In some cases this assertion is apt. I supervise the IT dept. for a board serving 12 schools. We are chronically underfunded and use what we can get our hands on. We use donated computers in the schools, donated servers and GAFE. Anything we can do that has no monetary cost goes into the schools. If your kid went to our schools, we honestly have no interest in catering to parents like you. Your kids get what we give them or they do without and get left behind, it's as simple as that and we can't afford to apologize. You suggest it is a democracy, but I'm telling you it's not. Even when you elect your board, we still do what ever we have to do to get these kids through school and get them exposed to the tech they need to know.
Students don't create their own accounts
Gah. The point isn't about who pushes the button to create the damn thing.
Think again. If my child was in such a system, I would not allow a creation of an advertising-firm account on their behalf, regardless of who actually pushes the final button. It's the account that is unacceptable, not the specifics of who creates it.
Well, school boards like mine don't have much cash, you're kids would get what we give them or they can do all their work on paper. GAFE does has advertising disabled.
He who has but four and spends five has no need for a wallet.
