BendBulletin.com

Students Use Fingerprints for ID

April 19, 2005

By Keith Chu

The Bulletin

MADRAS — When Angelo Medina, 15, approached the cashier in the Madras High School cafeteria, he didn't have to fumble with money or swipe a card.

He just pulled his finger out of his pocket and placed it on a translucent blue touchpad. The pad read his fingerprint, automatically charged his lunch account and let him go about choosing what to eat.

Administrators at Madras High School credit the touchpad system — new this year — with speeding up lunch lines and allowing the school to go to a single lunch period, which in turn has decreased discipline problems.

Vice Principal Ken Clark said discipline statistics were unavailable on Monday.

The system allows students who buy breakfast or lunch at the cafeteria to prepay for their food. Each time they scan in their fingerprint, the system automatically charges their account.

Most students said they don't mind scanning their fingers every day, as long as they get their lunch a little faster.

Medina and Amanda Coffee, both 15, entered the lunch line at 12:07. By 12:16 they were getting food and a few minutes later, they'd sat down to eat it.

Last year, that could've taken twice as long, said Christina Carrillo, 18. "You had to take your lunch to class," Carrillo said.

After students put their finger on the pad, lunch secretary Betty McDonald handed each child a Styrofoam plate and they picked up a red tray, napkin and plastic silverware from a cart. During a given 40-minute lunch, about 450 kids will shuffle through the line, McDonald said.

Kyle Climer, 16, said he's not worried about the finger scans as an invasion of privacy. "I'm not, but a lot of people are," Climer said.

Jefferson County School District is one of only two in the state to use the finger scanners for school lunches, said Heidi Dupuis, a nutrition specialist at the Oregon Department of Education.

Jefferson County School District Food Service Supervisor Patty Jobe said she converted to the finger-scanning system this year to speed up lines and make accounting easier. About 80 percent of the district's students participate in the federal free or reduced-lunch program, according to state statistics.

"A lot of the students couldn't remember to bring their cards and they just took too much time," Jobe said.

Under the card system, students often used other students' cards. And if a card went missing, its owner had to pay $5 to replace it. Now, lost cards and forgotten passwords aren't a problem, said Clark. "Kids can't lose their fingers," Clark said.

The district paid $450 each for the two scanners at the high school, Jobe said. It spent about $2,500 for accounting software that goes with the scanners, she said.

Jefferson County Middle School started using a scanner at lunch earlier this month. So far it's been slower than swiping lunch cards, said Char Rowe, a school secretary.

The Rainier School District, 40 miles west of Portland is the only other Oregon school district to use finger scanners. Rainier bought the system last year, said Christi Harris, food service manager for the district.

Overall, the system is slow, but easy to use, she said. Although it works better than some other computerized systems the district used, it sometimes misidentifies a finger or two, Harris said.

The Vernonia School District in Northwest Oregon considered adding finger scanners, but scrapped the plan after parents protested the devices, said Gretchen Lindauer, a food service worker at Vernonia High School.

"We had a bunch of people in there saying it was a violation of rights," Lindauer said.

The problem, she said, was the district didn't tell parents about the program before implementing it.

The Jefferson County School District did send a letter to parents this summer before scanning the fingerprints of every high school student, said Patti Jobe, the food service supervisor for the Jefferson County School District.

According to Dupuis and Jobe, the scanners are just a way to speed lines along, and don't represent a privacy risk. The computer system only examines a few points on a student's finger and saves that information as an electronic identifying code, Jobe said. That code can't be turned back into a fingerprint, she said.

"We don't have reservations if a district chooses to use (scanners)," Dupuis said.

Still, fingerprinting children for a lunch program could make them more willing to volunteer private information, said Chris Hoofnagle, senior counsel with the West Coast branch of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a nonprofit privacy advocacy group.

"It represents an effort to acclimate people to invasions of privacy," Hoofnagle said. "We don't fingerprint people in America except for when they're arrested or when they're in school."

Despite privacy concerns, however, the scanners are part of a growing trend of using unique personal traits, such as fingerprints, hand prints or retinas, as identification. Collectively known as biometrics, the industry made $1.2 billion last year and is projected to quadruple by 2008, according to David Fisch, a consultant at the International Biometric Industry Association.

Although security and identification make up the bulk of the industry's growth, fingerprint scanners are being tested in supermarkets and other retail settings as a replacement for credit cards, Fisch said. The technology is still rare in schools, he said.

Students in line said they weren't too happy about volunteering their fingerprints, but that the convenience of getting lunch quickly made it worthwhile.

At one recent lunch students could choose between chicken strips, pizza, turkey or ham hoagies, chef's salad, yogurt with string cheese and sides of mash potatoes, green beans and garlic-cheese bread.

Although the lunchroom is going high tech, students said the food hasn't changed.

"It's all right, I guess," Carrillo said, pushing her red tray toward the middle of the table. "I don't want any more though."

Keith Chu can be reached at 541-383-0348 or at kchu@bendbulletin.com.