Touch, eat 'n' tell

Pinellas schools are testing a new ID system designed to let students zip through lunch lines — and give them an incentive to make wise choices from the menu.
By RITA FARLOW
St. Petersburg Times
Oct. 22, 2006

MADEIRA BEACH — Coming to Pinellas County schools: a way for parents to check up on their children’s meal choices.

The new technology, which debuted Wednesday at two schools, will let parents go online and see exactly what their kids are buying for lunch. If the trial period goes smoothly, the program should be available in every Pinellas school by early April, administrators said.

The $900,000 system, developed by Horizon Software International of Loganville, Ga., uses a biometric finger scan to identify students.

“It is not a fingerprint. It takes the image of the finger and uses points to create a number,” said Robert Smith, a Horizon senior systems engineer.

The number, actually a lengthy series of 0s and 1s, is created by measuring 32 points on a child’s left middle finger. Because each number is unique to a student, school officials are confident the system will reduce the fraudulent use of student identification numbers.

“They may memorize someone else’s ID number, but they can’t take their finger scan with them,” said Art Dunham, assistant director of food services for Pinellas schools.

Horizon officials say Pinellas is the first school district in Florida to use finger scans, though schools in other states use similar technology, as do Walt Disney World and even some convenience stores.

Food services officials say the system should move students through lunch lines more quickly, giving them more time to eat.

Several students at Madeira Beach Middle School, where the scans began Wednesday, said they hope that’s true.
“If I get here late, the line is real long,’’ said Gina LaProva, 12. “It looks like it’s going faster today.”

Brenda Poff, principal at Madeira Beach Middle, said her students had no trouble adapting to the new system.

“We try to get the kids to visualize it as a finger picture or finger image that is a digital image,’’ she said. “This is translated into a long password, and, of course, passwords are very familiar to them in their own use of technology.”

In addition to its $900,000 price tag, the system will cost the district about $50,000 annually to maintain. Dunham said that is comparable to current costs.

Hillsborough County schools also use a system created by Horizon, but it uses a seven-digit number instead of a finger scan to identify students. Parents can still go online to see menus and meal choices, pay accounts and fill out applications for free and reduced price lunch.

“Our parents are getting the hang of this,” said Mary Kate Harrison, Hillsborough’s general manager of student nutrition services.

Harrison said her department is aware of biometric scanning, but doesn’t think it is cost-effective.

“When you’re looking at the number of meals we serve every day, we don’t have a lot of children trying to pull one over on us,’’ she said. “It’s not really worth the expense of trying to change right now.”

Harrison said she thought finger scans might actually be slower than ID numbers, because students can “preload” numbers into the keypads. Once one student has finished a transaction, the next student’s information immediately comes up onto the screen.

Parent Jenny Lynn said she hasn’t signed her children up for the scan. Lynn said she was concerned about her children’s privacy and questioned whether the new system would get her kids to the checkout line any quicker.

“I don’t think it speeds it up, because either way, they have to give that number,” she said.

But Lynn, whose son and daughter attend Madeira Beach Middle, said she would take full advantage of being able to keep track of what her kids are eating and make payments online.

“I really like that idea,” she said.