For unknown reasons, Caydence Dawson suddenly decided she hated school.
Attempts to return the second grader to a special education classroom in Bakersfield, California, were met with hitting, scratching, and biting.
She is nonverbal and could not tell anyone why she was upset, her mother, Ashley Hopwood, said.
“I told the school, something’s going on,” Hopwood told The Epoch Times. “This is not my kid.”
Weeks later, two school employees told her what happened: Teacher aides mistreated Caydence, yelling in her face until she cried and making her sit in a chair as she watched classmates go outside to enjoy recess.
Camera footage from the hallways and playground confirmed those events, Hopwood said.
The event underscores a national debate between those who say cameras are necessary to protect special needs children who can’t speak up for themselves and privacy rights advocates who fear constant surveillance is unfair to students and teachers.
Legislation in the nation’s largest state making cameras a K–12 industry standard would be a massive momentum swing, and several states already have such regulations or have proposed them.
Texas’s law allowing cameras in special education classrooms took effect in 2015.
Since then, similar legislation was passed in Louisiana, West Virginia, and Georgia, plus pilot programs in Florida and Maryland.
There are bills in Tennessee, Iowa, and South Carolina, according to their respective state legislature websites.
The regulations vary to some degree. In Texas, camera installation for special education classrooms must be requested, while Louisiana’s measure requires cameras in every classroom.
There are also different provisions in districts and state laws governing whether the footage includes both audio and visual, when the cameras can be activated, and safeguards for ensuring the technology is used for student safety and not teacher and staff surveillance.
In Maryland, Frederick County schools during the 2025–2026 academic year launched a pilot program to add cameras to special education classrooms, according to the district website.
A state senate bill was introduced mandating cameras in special education classrooms in every district, but lawmakers are poised to see how the pilot works out before considering further legislation.
Florida completed a similar pilot program in Broward County schools in 2024. The district spent about $774,000 on 320 cameras.
During the three-year program, there were 32 requests from parents to see footage, according to a state legislative review.
The Broward County schools board of education voted to continue allowing cameras to be installed if parents request them.
A Senate bill requiring all school districts to establish a policy for cameras in special education classrooms upon request from parents was introduced earlier this year, but the legislation hasn’t advanced.
In Texas, just having the cameras in place for the past decade has likely deterred inappropriate conduct, and footage reviewed after incidents has helped resolve complaints and, in some incidents, vindicate teachers or staff who didn’t break any rules, said Steven Aleman, senior policy specialist for Disability Rights Texas.
“We generally feel it’s been successful in helping parents back up concerns about abuse,” he told The Epoch Times. “It’s been a good safeguard for families.”
States and school districts that are considering a similar program should use the same implicit threshold as Texas, Aleman said.
Video footage should not immediately be made available to the complainant or subject of the complaint. Instead, it should be up to a district administrator to review the video and be sure that an incident actually took place before anything is shared.
“There has to be something to be seen before the parent is allowed to see it,” he said.
The main complaints about Texas’s program are the costs for additional cameras, but schools are already subject to broader security and camera requirements to address various safety concerns, Aleman said.
He said Texas state lawmakers expect to consider amendments to the law in 2027.
Cameras in classrooms are a contested issue, mainly because of privacy rights concerns.
The ACLU of South Carolina opposes the proposed H4725 House bill that was introduced in Palmetto State last year.
“The state should not single out one vulnerable group of students and one subset of teachers for constant surveillance,” the organization said on its website.
Disability advocacy organization the Association for the Severely Handicapped (TASH) has maintained a similar position since 2015, saying cameras in special education classrooms “create or strengthen a bias toward restrictive settings.”
“Surveillance of students and teachers in schools, rather than making schools safer, can conversely create a climate of fear, mistrust, and victimization among students and teachers,” the TASH policy says.
By contrast, Hopwood said many teachers in the Bakersfield district support the added protections for special education students following multiple incidents at her daughter’s school.
Another mother complained that her child was dragged across a classroom floor. Some instructional staff were fired following an investigation, said Hopwood, who has since moved Caydence to a charter school.
Without cameras in the classrooms, where special education students spend most of their school day, parents still don’t know the extent of the abuse or mistreatment inflicted on Caydence and others.
Hopwood initiated a petition drive calling for statewide laws allowing cameras in special education classrooms, and parents in another district followed suit after a complaint in one of their schools.
In California, a 1976 law requiring principals and teachers to consent to classroom cameras has discouraged school communities from pursuing these protective measures in special education classrooms, Hopwood said.
Her petition, with 20,000 signatures so far, along with a petition in the Visalia Central Valley district with about 2,800 signatures, calls for new statewide legislation.
Leadership changes following school board and state legislator elections next month could also have implications for the issue.
In the meantime, Hopwood, whose other daughter, Kamaya, is a special education student in a Bakersfield elementary school, said she’ll continue working within the current regulations and try to reach an agreement with school leaders and educators.
“They can do it, but it’s a lot of work,” she said. “Well, let’s get to work then.”
The Epoch Times has reached out to the Bakersfield City School District for comment.
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