In March 2024, a Burlingame student sent a school email to a friend with the subject line “I WANT TO KILL MYSELF,” attaching a screenshot of a failed attempt at the New York Times’ Connections game. Within an hour, the message led to a meeting with wellness counselors and a call to the student’s parents later that day.

“At the time, it was a little bit of a shock,” the student said, requesting anonymity due to the sensitivity of the incident. “[I realized], ‘Oh, they have access to everything I’m doing.’”

The alert was generated by Bark for Schools, an artificial intelligence-powered software developed by Bark Technologies in the wake of the 2018 Parkland school shooting. Since its implementation in SMUHSD in October 2021, the program has scanned student activity across the Google Suite, including emails, images, and files. The system also tracks search history and irregular account activity linked to school-issued Google accounts — regardless of whether students use a personal device or other Wi-Fi networks. 

While district-wide Bark alerts have gradually decreased throughout the last three school years, the average number of Bark alerts has increased from 5.3 alerts per day in 2023-2024 to 7.8 in 2024-2025 as of Feb. 18. Assistant Principal Aimee Malcolm attributes this increase to new district phone and Chromebook policies, which may lead students to engage in alternative forms of communication through Google Docs. 

According to Interim Director of Student Services Valerie Arbizu, content on a student’s school-issued Chromebook, email, or Google account is rarely private. Any topics deemed inappropriate, even if written in slang or abbreviations, are subject to administrative review.

“Nothing involving your school-issued account is private regardless of where you’re logging in from,” Arbizu said.

When content is flagged, administrators, deans, and wellness counselors determine the appropriate response based on the nature of the alert.

“Bark is an application that the district office purchased, and it monitors all student and staff interactions. It’s looking for targeted words around violence [and] hate speech,” Dean of Students Nicole Carter said.

The software automatically flags content deemed a potential safety risk, including cyberbullying, suicidal ideation, pornography, and threats of violence. According to Principal Jen Fong, all alerts generated by Bark lead to a follow-up meeting with the student.

“If you jokingly write down ‘this class is so boring, I want to kill myself,’ we will call you in to do a suicide check even [if] you were joking about how boring the teacher or the class was,” Fong said. “You can’t joke like that on your Google Docs.”

In the fall of 2022, another student who requested anonymity was contacted by wellness counselors after writing past suicidal thoughts in a Google document. The student said their parents were contacted before they were scheduled to meet with wellness counselors to provide context.

“They gave me space to talk about [my suicidal thoughts] afterward and they didn’t give me a chance to communicate with my parents before [the wellness counselors contacted them],” the anonymous source said. “If you’re planning on harming yourself, [and] it’s just personal information that you need a space to share and want to write down [on a Google Doc], I don’t think they [the administrators] should be able to monitor [this content].”

While students may assume their digital conversations are private, Bark alerts related to mental health concerns require parents to be notified. 

“A Bark alert, because it’s typically of a mental health concern, requires that we inform a parent that a Bark alert was addressed,” Wellness Counselor Christina Cabrera said. “That is part of the protocol and the policy that’s been set forth by the district. This may be kind of at odds with what students understand confidentiality to be, but any Bark alert requires [us to] communicate with the family.”

For many students, the extent of digital monitoring remains largely unknown — until they find themselves called in for questioning or intervention.

Senior Francesca Radzyminski only became fully aware of the system’s reach when wellness counselors called her in. Her friend had been flagged by Bark for sending her a joke about suicide, prompting school officials to intervene and confirm whether it was genuinely a joke.

“I had an idea that they must have had something in place to flag bad content, but I didn’t realize it was to the extent where they could see kind of everything,” Radzyminski said. “I guess I was vaguely aware that they must have had something in place.”

According to Malcolm, Bark wasn’t implemented to punish students but to support them and encourage learning from their actions. In disciplinary situations where EdCode is not violated, administrators utilize alternatives to suspensions whenever possible. 

“It really is [meant] to be a helpful measure,” Malcolm said. “We want to be able to respond to any of these pieces, and we do as often as we can at BHS, take an asset-based [approach], and try to use it as a teachable moment.”