The Los Angeles Unified School District is piloting a new program that will allow students to use their fingerprints to pay for lunch.
The system is designed to speed up lunch lines, save the district money and solve the problem of forgotten or lost lunch money, the Contra Costa Times reported.
The new system involves taking the print of one finger per student and linking that print to a numeric code that stays with the student throughout their academic career. This eliminates the need for cash in school cafeterias, and also hides the identity of students who qualify for free or reduced lunches, reports KABC.
"When people knew that they were on free or reduced lunch, especially at the high school level, no one wanted anyone to know, so sometimes they would not eat. But the great thing about it is that everyone can eat now. Everyone does eat, and they feel good about eating," Foshay Learning Center Principal Yvonne Edwards told KABC.
Before the system, these students got small yellow tickets to use, which cost LAUSD about $1 million a year to print.
The finger scanning has been in place at Foshay Learning Center for more than a year and has grown on students such as junior Eva Perez.
"Before, if I lost my card I would have to wait in line to get a new one or I wouldn't be able to eat. But I can't lose my finger," Perez told the Times.
However, there are some opponents of the new program who argue that the system could violate student privacy. Peter Bibring, a lawyer with the Southern California American Civil Liberties Union, argues that "making school children submit to fingerprinting, and risking the misuse of biometric information before they are old enough to drive a car seems like an absurdly risky and invasive way to get slightly faster lunch lines."
However district officials have maintained that the system has been studied and implemented carefully, and that no students should be worried about maintaining their privacy, reports the Contra Costa Times:
"We carefully vetted this process... No one would be able to generate a fingerprint from this database," said Dennis Barrett, LAUSD's director of food services.
Some parents are opposed to the program as well. Some are saying that they will opt out of the scan program if it is implemented at their child's school, an option that will be available to all parents and students.
Others are still concerned about the security of the system despite the assurances that everyone will remain safe.
LAUSD will be spreading the system to all schools that accept it by 2012.
