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Students who volunteered for the program will use a finger imaging system to access their school lunch accounts instead of using keypads to punch in personal identification numbers. The keypads are wearing out and need to be replaced, said Lyn Halvorson, district director of food services.
Cafeteria workers have also found that students, either intentionally or inadvertently, have given their identification numbers to peers, allowing them access to their accounts. District officials hope this new system will eliminate the problem, as students will need to use their fingers to access their accounts. The change is also expected to speed up the lines.
The pilot program will be begin fully in May, and if it goes as planned, will be implemented districtwide next school year. If students choose to opt out of the imaging system, they will be allowed to continue to use their current keypad number, which will be manually entered by cafeteria workers.
Several parents expressed concern to WSHS principal John Phelps about the program, saying it invoked images of George Orwell’s novel “1984,” in which a government tightly controlled citizens’ personal lives. They objected to the district creating a fingerprint database of students, wondered why the current system was no longer adequate and asked why they weren’t notified the program was going to be tested.
District administrators and Bob Engen owner of Educational Biometric Technology, the business providing the digital imaging, said those concerns are not warranted because students are not actually fingerprinted. The software EBT provides takes measurements of a fingerprint and encodes it into a secret identification number. No actual fingerprints are stored, fingerprints cannot be reproduced from the system, and students cannot be identified by their numbers without entering their fingers into a reader. The encoded information will be kept by the district, not EBT.
Parents were to be notified of the pilot program in April’s high school newsletter. Phelps said he realized too late the notice would be released after the program was started. An appointment with the company already had been set up, and the district decided to go ahead. The Central school newsletter included information about the program, and WSHS placed information about it on its Web site after complaints from parents.
“I assumed the April newsletter would have gone out sooner,” Phelps said. “That’s my fault.”
Money for a new identification system — either this one or another, depending on how the pilot project goes — will come out of the nutritional services budget, Halvorson said. She said the imaging system would be cheaper than replacing the keyboards with new ones.
