Calif. schools to fingerprint students

[Tab]

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. - A plan to fingerprint elementary school students when they buy lunch has some parents worrying that Big Brother has come to the cafeteria.

The Hope Elementary School District has notified parents that, beginning this month, students at Monte Vista, Vieja Valley and Hope elementary schools will press an index finger to a scanner before buying cafeteria food.

The scan will call up the student's name and student ID, teacher's name and how much the student owes, since some receive government assistance for food.

It is meant to speed up cafeteria lines.

"It raises sanitary issues, privacy issues — it is kind of Orwellian," said Tina Dabby, a parent of two at Monte Vista Elementary. "It just sounds kind of creepy."

Currently, the information is written on paper and transferred to computer so reports can be compiled and sent to the state and federal governments, which reimburse school districts for the subsidized lunches served.

"It's so archaic to transfer something from a sheet of paper to a computer day by day," Hope schools Superintendent Gerrie Fausett told the Santa Barbara News-Press.

A similar procedure is already in use in the Santa Barbara School Districts, where students punch a six-digit number into a keypad that calls up their name, photograph and other details, including whether they have any food allergies.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061104/ap_on_re_us/fingerprinting_students

[saigon68]

1. Disgusting isn't it.

[Massacure]

2. Paper may be archaic, but that is what magnetized ID cards are for.

Fingerprint scanners are kind of creepy.

[Tab]

3. There's lots of ways to pull this off without fingerprints

and it's a slippery slope until we require fingerprints for grade reports, etc... and then....

[beyurslf]

4. Why don't they just put it on their student ID. That's what they did here.

I don't want to touch that thing after the kid in front of me spent 10 minutes with his finger up his nose.

[partylessinOhio]

5. We need to be very careful how we treat our children. Can't we just

leave them out of the wacky schemes and distrust of adults?

[rocktivity]

6. How much THE STUDENT owes????

What happens if the student can't pay up--expulsion or starvation?

:crazy:
rocknation

[Zorra]

7. Those prints are going right into the FBI fingerprint database. n/t

[EllenZ]

8. scanner

I find it hard to believe that the fingerprint files will not somehow find their way into a national database.

When my nephew was in Aldine ISD (Independent School District) in Houston a few years ago, every student had to have a school issued ID card visible while on school grounds. The magnetic strip on the back was swiped to enter/leave each day. This would be an easier and more secure method to my way of thinking.

[Thor_MN]

9. It's very unlikely that the scanner actually stores fingerprints.

This is probably the same scanners used in grocery stores and on laptop computers. It stores a set of data that can be used to verify a fingerprint, but can not be used to re-create an image of a fingerprint.

I think the bigger issue is that they are making schools so huge that no one knows who the students are. My elementary class was the largest to pass through the school for years either way and was 45 students. I graduated high school with a class of 190, also the largest in years. If you did something noteworthy, it didn't matter what teacher or worker saw it, they all knew who each of us were. My nephews go to schools that have 400 in each grade - too damn big.

If they have to herd the students though lunch lines that fast, the problem isn't ID, it's that there are too many students in the school.

[OKNancy]

10. kick

[MilesColtrane]

11. The worst part of this,...

if it's implemented, is that those kids will come to accept that being scanned by those in charge is absolutely normal and shouldn't be given a second thought.

When they grow up and have their own children, I wonder what those kids will accept without question.