Tuesday October 2, 2007, 7:52 am
As if any school were immune to Homeland Security. There's no protection of privacy anywhere in the U.S. anymore.

Tuesday October 2, 2007, 8:03 pm
kids have id numbers here and all they need to do is type it in the key pad. It starts when they enter school. In K they carry the number around until they remember it. My child is fingerprinted but I did it for safety reasons and don't necessarily think schools need that info. There are other ways to resolve this issue.

Tuesday October 2, 2007, 9:15 pm
When they started the fingerprinting program, it was incase of being kidnapped. They have a SS# since the day they are born. Just watch to make sure they don't implant them with the ID BS.
Trust NO ONE!

Wednesday October 3, 2007, 6:47 am
Why can't they just give the kids a credit card type thing? The teachers could hand them out before lunch and collect them afterwards. There is no needed to finger print them.

Wednesday October 3, 2007, 7:18 am
After working in a school cafeteria as an IT Technician, I can safely say that the keypads don't work. Today, kids are dumber that when I was in school. I don't say that offensively in anyway whatsoever; it isn't the kids' fault, but the lack of a decent education. I'm in Florida, and the schools today have a mantra that says "If it's not going to be tested on the FCAT, don't teach it". Since remembering your student ID isn't on the FCAT, teachers are instructed not to teach it. Just as an example, my sister graduated high school this year and was never, in her 12 years of education, instructed on how to properly write a check.

Things need to be taken in to consideration.. you have 200 kids in a cafeteria who need to buy their lunch and still have time to eat. By the time those 199 kids have bought their meals and sit down, the last kid has about 5 minutes to eat. I remember in my high school, there were fistfights because someone made it to the line before someone else (because the kid who was late or was held up had less time to eat).

A solution needs to be implemented that would allow a quick line, and not require students to carry something or remember something.. that holds up the line. Remember the Visa commercial, where everyone is using their credit cards and the line moves smoothly until that one person pays with cash and it holds up the entire process? Yeah, that's our school lunch lines.. things move great until you have the kid that can't remember his or her number, or the kid that can't figure out how to key in their number in to the keypad.

So, what is a good solution? Leaving it as is doesn't solve the current problem, as you will always have the kids who forget their number. Using a barcode scanner might help, but then you'll have the kids who lose or drop their cards somewhere. Same deal with a credit-card type system. I won't even think about a cash system... there shouldn't be anything in school that requires cash these days, as it's too easy to "lose" cash.

I like the idea of a fingerprint reader, so long as the systems are managed in-house. The school system I used to work at was moving towards fingerprint readers, but all the systems were in-house.. there was no outside company that kept the data, thus there was not really a concern about identity theft because all data was on the school server.

Parents in my community are pretty excited about it. So, I think the fingerprinting option is a good solution, provided the data is kept where it is supposed to be: in the schools.

.. and on a side note, WTF is up with the "Do Care2 Members Even Care?" part of the headline? Is that really necessary?