The Guilford County Board of Education got the hard sell at last night’s work session from the vendor hoping to get the contract for what (will be) a district-wide student ID system:
Access411 works with the school districts in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, among others. One of their presenters brought along an example of a kiosk students would use to swipe in upon entering school. While there are many options of upgrades, in the pilot program, students would use cards with bar codes, not chips. They would install up to four kiosks inside the designated entrance of each school, depending on the student population. Access411 staff talked about, for example, a school with two kiosks, where one kiosk would be for students swiping in, and the other would be for printing out a temporary ID pass for students who don’t have theirs. The system would require staff to monitor arrival and swipe-in.
Superintendent Sharon Contreras wants to start the ID system at the “pilot” level, using $587,000 from a “special fund” GCS has as result of a settlement. Costs to continue the ID program at the pilot level would run $175,000 per year, according to Contreras. Obviously the idea is to go system-wide, and wit that in mind, board chairman Alan Duncan–a smart guy by anybody’s standard (John Edwards is is a free man thanks to Duncan) —“did some back-of-the-envelope calculations to suggest it could cost the district something like $2.5 million in the second year, with the start-up costs for the other schools, and $875,000 in years going forward.”
I honestly hate to be skeptical regarding pretty everything GCS undertakes, but if the ID program is anything like the tablet rollout a few years ago, then parents, teachers and students best check their patience now.
