The district will also pay $425,000 in legal fees to the students' attorney, Mark Haltzman.
School Board President David Ebby said the board reached the agreements after intensive behind-the- scenes talks and after settling with its insurance company, which had contended such claims weren't covered under the district's multimillion-dollar liability policy. The insurer, Graphic Arts Mutual Insurance, will cover $1.2 million of the fees and awards.
"We believe that his settlement enables us to move forward in a way that is most sensitive to our students, taxpayers and entire school district community," said Ebby.
The settlements could close one of the more unflattering chapters in Lower Merion's history.
Beginning in 2008, the district rolled out a plan to give the nearly 2,300 students at its two high schools their own laptop computers to use in class and take home each day. But administrators never told students that missing computers could be remotely tracked using software that let technicians turn on laptop webcams and see what was on a user's screen.
That capability burst into public view when Robbins and his parents filed a federal class-action lawsuit in February. In it, they claimed that the school district had secretly snapped hundreds of images from the teen's laptop, including one when he was sleeping in his bedroom. Robbins learned of the technology, they said, when an assistant principal at his school confronted him with a webcam photo.
Lower Merion immediately disabled the technology, suspended two staffers who oversaw the tracking, apologized to students and parents, and hired a team of lawyers and computer specialists to investigate.
