Biometric solution dropped in Florida district schools
23 June, 2011
category: Biometrics, Education
Schools in the Florida Seminole County school district have decided to drop its four-year-old program involving seven schools that saw students utilizing a fingerprint-based authentication system to pay for their school lunch, according to an Orlando Sentinel article.
The decision was based almost entirely on the savings dropping the system would mean for the district as a cheaper alternative presented itself as the $23,000 renewal came up.
The new system relies on face recognition, however does not utilize any high-tech systems as it simply involves students presenting their account number that, when punched in, brings up a student’s school ID picture so that the cafeteria worker can manually verify that the student and the picture match.
The new system is actually not new at all as the old biometric system did the same thing but only required the fingerprint to access the account number. Now students will be expected to remember their own account number.
Additional reasons for leaving the biometric system behind involve the lack success utilizing the system with younger students fingers and the amount of work that went into enrollment.
Read the full story here.