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Roosevelt students get access to unauthorized sites on new iPads

Bianca Gomez, left, Humberto Salazar and Doroteo Cruz try out a new iPad at Roosevelt High School in Boyle Heights last week. This week, The Times has learned, some students had bypassed security systems to access unauthorized websites.
Bianca Gomez, left, Humberto Salazar and Doroteo Cruz try out a new iPad at Roosevelt High School in Boyle Heights last week. This week, The Times has learned, some students had bypassed security systems to access unauthorized websites.
(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)
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More than 300 Roosevelt High School students found ways around security on their new school-issued iPads and visited unauthorized websites, The Times has learned.

It took students at the Boyle Heights campus less than a week to decode the security measures, raising questions about overall precautions related to a $1-billion technology investment by the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Roosevelt High was one of the first schools in the nation’s second-largest school system to receive the tablet computers made by Apple, in the first phase of a district-wide rollout.

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Students began to receive the tablets a week ago, with devices still being handed out to some classes at the end of the week.

But even by then, students figured out how to bypass security meant to prevent them from reaching such sites as YouTube and Facebook.

“They had to shut down all the iPads yesterday,” said ninth-grader Alan Munoz.

L.A. Unified officials confirmed the problem. The district’s communications office was preparing a statement Tuesday afternoon.

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Twitter: @howardblume

howard.blume@latimes.com

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