Lorain City Schools is implementing a new attendance tracking platform, IdentiMetrics, that allows students to more quickly and efficiently “scan into” our school building each morning as we begin each day.
At the start of each school day, one of the first and most important tasks that our buildings carry out is verifying whether your child is present, absent, or tardy to school. To that end, by 9:30 AM each morning, if your child is absent from school, we contact you with a phone call to ensure that you know your child is not under our care for that particular school day.
To ensure our students can enter our buildings more efficiently, to provide the highest possible level of safety, and to allow for a more responsive process in resolving attendance data and calling home, we will soon begin using biometric scanners that translate a finger scan into the student's ID number. It's a technology similar to what you already use on your smartphones.
Using a finger scanner, the software scans specific unique points on a student's finger and translates those points into a binary number specific to that student. That specific number is stored locally on our computer server. When the student scans into the building the next time, the software recognizes that student's number and translates it to the student's ID number. This entire process takes less than a second. Though not required, all students are encouraged to use this technology to scan into our middle and high schools. If you want to opt your child out of this process, please email Pat Coleman, our Executive Director of Educational Technology, at [email protected].
You need to know that at no time does the software take the student's fingerprint or any image of the student's fingerprint. It simply scans the finger and turns that scan into a unique number. Student numbers are deleted upon graduation or withdrawal.
This technology will take the burden off our students from having to worry about remembering to carry their ID cards with them constantly, enhance campus safety, and work to improve the logistical systems we have in place.
If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to Pat Coleman, our Executive Director of Educational Technology, at [email protected].