CHESTER COUNTY, South Carolina — Starting next month, the Chester County School District will implement a biometric system at all three high schools.
Instead of students using an ID number to check out books, purchase lunch or get into the school, students will now be required to scan their thumbs to prove identification.
School officials tell NBC Charlotte, the system does not scan the student’s fingerprint, instead, it creates a specific code based off a scan of a student’s thumb.
“It is a biometric scan where the biometrics assign a code to the child,” said Melanie Jarrett. Jarrett is the Chief Financial Officer for the district.
“Each child is individually identified and uniquely identified so it makes it easy to make sure we’re counting those students,” said Jarrett.
Dr. Duane Graham, principal of Chester High School says he brought the idea of the biometric system to the district officials after he noticed students were unable to eat lunch due to the lengthy process at the checkout line.
Right now, students have to present an ID number to cashiers, cashiers then have to type in the number and ensure it matches the student’s photo ID.
At Chester High, more than 400 students have an average of 32 minutes to eat.
“They’ll get their lunch and they may have seven, eight minutes, maybe 10 minutes to eat,” said Dr. Graham.
“Hopefully, this will speed up the process.”
The district has sent out letters to parents to explain how the system works. Parents can choose to opt out of the system.