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CAFETERIA TO USE BIOMETRICS

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By JULIA FERRANTE

The Tampa Tribune

Published: April 16, 2008

NEW PORT RICHEY - The turkey-gravy-covered mashed potatoes and milk teetered precariously on the black plastic foam trays as first-graders Joey Menicola and Anthony Berela waited to punch in their numbers.

"It's crowded!" Joey exclaimed as cafeteria manager JoAnn Schmidt passed by on a recent Thursday. He was about 10 deep in a line of 36 Schrader Elementary School students waiting to key in their six-digit student codes at checkout to show their parents had prepaid for hot lunch.

"I was like, 'Oh my God. It won't stop.'

" Anthony said later, estimating he had been in line for about two minutes.

It takes more like 15 minutes for students to collect their corn dogs, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, salad and fruit and get through the queue each day, Schmidt said. That cuts too deeply into the 30 minutes they are allotted to eat, she said.

Schrader Elementary and Chasco Middle School will test a new program this month in the hope of speeding up the lunch lines, said Rick Kurtz, the district's food, nutrition and distribution services director. The biometrics system, sold by School-Link Technologies, is similar to one used by pass holders at Disney's theme parks in Orlando.

Students will place their index fingers on a touchpad scanner for identification rather than having to recall an assigned number and properly punch it in, Kurtz said. He stressed that the scanner collects and stores a numerical pattern that denotes contours rather than a fingerprint, and no fingerprints may be retrieved from the system. Parents who do not wish to have their children participate may opt out of the pilot program.

If the system works well, it will be installed at Veterans Elementary in Wesley Chapel and Crews Lake Middle in Shady Hills, which open next year, and phased in during the next three to five years. The cost, about $350 a keypad, is about the same as replacing the old system, which is about 10 years old, Kurtz said.

Schrader Elementary Principal Mary Stelnicki said she and Schmidt have been asking district officials for years to do something to speed up the lunch lines. They rejected the idea of identification cards, surmising that children inevitably would lose or forget them.

Classes are released to lunch every three minutes between about 11:15 and 1:45 p.m. The lines get longer as the day goes on, and about 475 students have to be fed. The problem is particularly bad at the beginning of the school year, when some students are as young as 4.

"The little guys forget their numbers, sometimes their names," Schmidt said. "The line gets longer and longer, so it cuts into their lunch time. They get bunched up, and then you worry they will drop their food or get burned."

Students also get hungry and bored while waiting in line Schmidt noted, as Schrader Elementary second-grader Breanna Bissey, standing a few places behind Joey and Anthony, dipped her head toward her tray and took a bite of a whole-grain roll.

Reporter Julia Ferrante can be reached at (813) 948-4220 or jferrante@tampatrib.com.

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