"Secondary students in the Natrona County School District won't need cash, plastic or passwords to pay for breakfast or lunch.
Instead, they'll be using something they'll be sure to bring with them every day: their index finger.
Beginning April 1, all of the district's junior high and high school cafeterias will start using a NUTRIKIDS POS (point-of-sale) system that uses biometric finger scans for identification.
Parents of students at Natrona County and Kelly Walsh high schools, Casper Classical Academy, Centennial Junior High, CY Junior High, Dean Morgan Junior High and Frontier Middle School were notified of the new program in a letter dated March 12.
The opportunity to opt out of the program ended March 18. The district began finger scans on March 23.
The hardware, software and training for the computerized identification and payment system cost the district approximately $150,000. NUTRIKIDS, which has been used in the district for 14 years to track the free and reduced lunch program, was chosen through a competitive bidding process to update nine-year-old software that no longer had tech support.
Along with speeding up food service, the updated software will be used to continue to track the district's compliance with the federal food programs, according to Mike Pyska, the district's food service manager.
The switch to biometrics for meal identification is not about 'the district trying to be big brother and store people's fingerprints,' Pyska said. Finger tips are scanned, but the prints aren't saved.
Here's how it works. The user presses his finger against a small reader surface that is attached to a computer. The computer software picks three small portions, such as common ridges or arcs from the fingerprint.
The ridges and arcs are turned into 'data points,' which then are turned into logorithms. The unique numerical identifier for each student -- not the actual fingerprint -- is stored in a database. There shouldn't be any concern that the district is fingerprinting children, Pyska said.
By next school year, parents also will be able to use NUTRIKIDS to pay into their student's accounts online. They'll also be able to look at what their children are eating.
One school district in Illinois uses the system as a tool against obesity by sending e-mails to parents listing their children's lunch choices.
The switch to biometrics is happening only in the district's secondary schools, primarily to stop 'kids from getting into other kids' lunch money' and to speed up the lunch lines, Pyska said.
A day before the opt-out day, the food service manager had received six or eight calls of concern. He was unsure of how many parents had gone directly to their children's cafeteria to protest.
Similar programs have created controversy
Identification using biometrics from fingerprints, voice, odor and even sweat is a $1 billion industry in North America. Elementary and high schools in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, West Virginia and about half the states in the Northeast and South use finger scans to pay for lunch.
Some school districts in St. Louis started using the NUTRIKIDS system in January.
Regardless of the common uses of the identification system, privacy concerns and fears of identity theft come along with using the process in schools. An Illinois mother rallied enough parental opposition to the technology that the state enacted a law requiring schools to get parental consent before taking a scan of children's fingerprints.
An Arizona Senate committee recently passed a bill against using biometrics in schools. Iowa and Michigan prohibit the practice, although Iowa is reconsidering the ban in light of additional information.
School districts in Boulder, Colo., Irvine, Calif. and Boston, Mass., rejected the program after initial consideration raised parental concerns.
According to Linda Burt, executive director of the Wyoming Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, there have been legitimate and serious privacy concerns expressed by security experts that stolen codes could be misused in new forms of biometric identity theft.
'It seems like something that is unnecessary,' she said. 'You can call it a fingerprint or anything else. It's still an individual identifier.'
A parent of both a junior high and a high school student questioned the school's ability to do something that he believes is prohibited by Wyoming law. Wyoming law does prohibit fingerprinting children and storing their prints, even by law enforcement, unless the child has been arrested for a felony.
'They've got better options than starting a database of the kids,' said the parent, who asked to remain unnamed. 'They can't guarantee it won't be used. The database will have more than enough to do a fingerprint analysis.'
At least part of the concern with the NCSD's biometrics program that began scanning fingers on March 23 may have been caused by the parental notification process.
Pyska defended the short notice method of a letter that was sent to homes during spring break, giving parents only a few days to decide whether to opt out of the system.
'The longer you give people, they wait until the last minute anyway,' so the district decided to see what feedback was received in a short period of time, he said.
Several parents who called the Casper Journal are angry about the lack of notice and explanation for a switch from pass cards and PIN numbers to biometrics. 'They never gave parents a choice,' one parent said. 'They need to back pedal quickly to say it won't happen until a permission slip is on file.'"The Casper Journal :: Casper's Community Newspaper:
