When it comes to the safety of the students, Elida Schools says that's their number one priority, and now, they have the technology to help with people coming in and out of the building. The school teamed up with PERRY proTECH to install a system that scans driver's licenses of non-staff members that come into the building. The system runs through several databases, including a sex offender registry, to find out if the adult should be going into a school.
"It also allows us to customize some of our registries; when people come in to see a student, there might be people that aren't allowed to be in because of parental situations or restraining orders, things like that, so that allows us to customize features that way, and also track visitors in and out of our building," said Joel Mengerink, superintendent of Elida Local Schools.
With what's been seen in the past few years regarding school safety, hooking this system up seemed like a no-brainer.
"We’ve seen a big increase in awareness, a big increase in concern from parents for their safety their kids, so we’re doing all we can - sometimes finances get in the way of things - but this is a step that we thought that we had to take," Mengerink said. "We feel that as we learn all the features of the program that it offers us, we’re going expand upon what we do with it."
PERRY proTECHÂ has installed the system in another school district, Allen East, and they say that they believe this won't be the last installation they do.
"This is our second installation, and we have a lot of schools that have shown a lot of interest, so we’re just getting started and we think that we’re going to have a tremendous value, a tremendous success with this product and partnering with our schools," said Bruce Sneary, Director of Major Accounts for PERRY proTECH. "It's very important to us, there's a lot of school districts that we work with closely, and this is a technology we're really excited about."
