Scan and eat: District uses fingerprints as meal tickets

AKRON (AP) -- Old-fashioned meal tickets are out. High-tech fingerprinting technology is in.
The school district here has begun implementing a $700,000 "iMeal" program that identifies pupils in school lunch lines using their fingerprints.
Pupils at one middle school were "enrolled" in the system Friday morning -- a process that involved scanning their fingerprints. Pupils at three other middle schools already have signed up.
Pupils whose parents don't want them fingerprinted can be issued a personal identification number.
"It's a parental and student choice what to do," said Debra Foulk, coordinator of the Akron schools' Child Nutrition Services. "We don't encourage or discourage either option."
District officials said they expect the program to be running in all middle school cafeterias by the end of the school year.
The district originally had hoped to have the system in place beginning last fall, but Foulk said it took this long to get all of the components -- new touch-screen registers, software and fingerprint-imaging scanners -- in place.
She said the system will be added to high schools in the fall. It will not be used in the elementary schools, where all pupils began receiving free lunches this school year.
How it works
The system will replace the meal-ticket method that has been used in middle and high school cafeterias for nearly two decades. When pupils go through the lunch line, they will place a finger on a scanner that will identify them based on the stored template.
Whether pupils use fingerprints or PIN numbers, they will be able to pay as they go through the lunch line or draw from a prepaid account.
Only one other Ohio district, Garfield Heights, uses this fingerprint technology.