By Anna Apoian and Gil Mara
School lunch schedules are fewer and shorter nowadays, and still hundreds, if not thousands, of students are released from classes at once. And most of them are hungry!
Determined food service employees attempt to feed the majority of the students efficiently, so they can return to their classrooms fed and ready to learn.
State Superintendent of Education Tom Torlakson sent a letter to district leaders this year to encourage decision makers to ensure each student has 20 minutes to eat lunch. That is 20 minutes after being served. The first students in the lunch line have ample time to eat all the leafy greens and fresh fruit being offered in the cafeteria. Unfortunately, the students at the end of the line do not have ample time to chew on all the roughage. It is not uncommon to see students chomping their last bites of food over the trash cans as they are instructed to throw it away to make room for the next class. Despite the healthy menu options available, the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, we still receive phone calls from concerned parents asking why their child is hungry when she/he returns home from school.
The Hawthorne School District Food Services Department is proud to say that it has cafeterias as some districts do not. And we are pleased to have staggered lunch schedules as well. In a district, where 87 percent of students are eligible for a meal at no charge, we want to ensure that each child has access to the lunch meal as well as time to eat it. Food Services attempted to speed up an already very efficient and effective system with biometrics.
Currently, each student enters their five-digit ID number on a keypad for their lunch. Ten students per minute, per computer are processed, which equates to 150 students in 15 minutes per point-of-sale station. Elementary sites have two POS computers and middle schools have three POS computers. Hawthorne SD employs the eTrition school nutrition system by Harris School Solutions. The system provides all pertinent student information at the POS, alerting food service employees of balances and food allergies.
The goal of the experiment was to speed up the line just a bit more, so that the last students in line have a few more minutes of “eating time.” We used the Fujitsu PalmSecure technology for a little over one month at two of school sites as a trial. It was easy to register students. The response time when a student came through the line shaved off approximately two seconds per student. However, misreading of the palms would occur if students kept their hands on the scanner too long or hovered over the scanner. This would result in either counting an additional meal or never finding a student who was initially registered. It would then take time to reset the computer for the next child. This negated the “speed” benefit, in our short experiment. Incorrectly registered students had to be reregistered, which consumed valuable time during a lunch service. We found that we may have let too much light on the image and we had the incorrect size scanner for one group of students. Ensuring an accurate registration of the students as well as properly sizing the scanner is key in reducing misreads. Nonetheless, we found the palm scanner to be slightly faster technology then a key pad.
At Hawthorne, when we had both our keypad and the scanner on the lunch line, students preferred the keypad, as they are accustomed to this method and they are tactile. If we had hidden the keypad, the students would have used the scanner more. For the pilot, we registered only one grade level, so we could not “hide” the keypad. If time were not an issue, piloting an entire school would likely have yielded a true test of the system.
A palm reader captures an internal biometric feature; in this case, a vein pattern. It is nonintrusive and is not impacted by surface issues, such as cracked skin, abrasions or cuts. This reduces the false reject rate and also makes it easier to enroll students. The palm scanner has a noncontact area, alleviating the need for sanitizer on the line, as used with the keypads.
Using similar technology that comes in a TV remote or Nintendo Wii video game, the device scans a two-inch square image. After scanning, the palm image is converted into a series of 1’s and 0’s that are only linked to a student record number within the existing POS software. It is recorded, digitized, and then connected back to the 5-digit number of the student that we currently use. This application does not permanently store a palm vein image.
Palm scanners are being tried and used in health care settings, school districts and retail stores for access to buildings, computer applications replacing passwords, and time and attendance systems.
Poway USD has installed the PalmSecure devices in 37 school sites. Director of Food and Nutrition Services Babre (Lou) Lewis, MBA, SNS, states, “The key to palm scanning is to make sure that each student is properly enrolled in the system.”
Babre noted that proper enrollment of the students into the system is the key to success. He also said that although it is only the first year, they have not had to replace any of the hardware.
The cost of a palm reader will depend on the source and the number of units purchased. An estimated $350 to $550 provides a general idea to prospective buyers. The two main benefits of the technology, as mentioned, are speed and ease in registration. One downfall is that two systems are still required for the families who request to opt out. At Poway, they continue to use a numeric key pad for students who have opted out of the biometric program.
Babre stated, “Only 1.3 percent of our 35,000-plus students have opted out of the program.”
The financial costs of the scanners outweigh the benefits of the swiftness of the palm scanner, here at Hawthorne SD. However, if a district has an outdated meal counting system or is still operating a manual system, such as tickets and is looking to automate and speed up lunch service, then biometric technology should certainly be explored.
At Hawthorne SD, and certainly true of other districts, the backup of the lunch line is not necessarily at the point of sale. More often than not, traffic must be halted at the POS to prevent the backup at the service counter or the self-serve salad bar. So as effective as the food service employees are, there is only so much they can do to move the crowd of students along.
If other districts choose to explore this avenue, focusing on clear and timely communication before implementation will be the key to success. Talk with your software provider to ensure that the palm readers are compatible. Write letters to the parents and caregivers, explaining the system and the purpose. Allow them a chance to “opt out.” Obtain training from the company for proper registration of the students and organize the registration days and times with the principals. It took a full day to register 300 students at one site, so plan wisely.
Robert Gravina, chief information officer of Poway USD, recommends, “Bring in your IT department early. There isn’t a lot for them to do, but there is some coordination to do and routines that your developers will need to write.”
Then the easy part is to go live and see what happens! With any new technology, improvements are required. With the palm readers, recognition capabilities will continue to improve as well. Food service directors will keep doing their best to speed up the lines so the students have more time to eat. IT directors will persist in providing the best security available for student information. And the advanced technology will allow school districts to continue in furnishing the best services for the students.
About the Authors
Anna Apoian is the food services director at Hawthorne Unified School District. Gil Mara is the technology coordinator at Hawthorne Unified School District. Gil can be reached at gmara@hawthorne.k12.ca.us.
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