Akron gives fingerprint meal system high grade
More students eat free; funding may benefit

Ohio Beacon Journal | February 2, 2005
By Stephanie Warsmith

A controversial cafeteria system that identifies Akron Public School students from their fingerprints has proved beneficial for the district, school leaders say.

More middle-school students who are eligible for free or reduced-price lunches now are taking advantage of them. That helps both the students and the district.

``What we've accomplished is taking that stigma away,'' Debra Foulk, coordinator of the Akron schools' Child Nutrition Services, said last week.

The high-tech system, dubbed iMeal, is being used in every Akron middle school and was installed in the last two weeks at Central-Hower, East and Buchtel high schools. It is expected to be added to the rest of the district's high schools before spring break in March, Foulk said.

In a divided vote, the Akron school board voted in April 2003 to spend $700,000 on a new cafeteria system to replace the meal ticket program in place for nearly two decades. The money came from the district's meal program budget, which pays for itself.

Some board members and parents were concerned about privacy issues involved with taking students' fingerprints.

Only one other Ohio district -- Garfield Heights -- was using this technology when Akron chose to adopt it.

The iMeal system includes new touch-screen registers, software and fingerprint-imaging scanners. Students' fingerprints are put into a scanner that makes a template of binary numbers corresponding with the unique swirls and arches of each print. When students go through the lunch line, they place their finger on a scanner that identifies them based on the stored template.

Designers of the system say the original fingerprints are deleted.

The system began being phased in to Akron's school cafeterias beginning last April. It will not be used in elementary schools, where all students are receiving free meals.

Students have the option of using personal identification numbers rather than fingerprints. Foulk said only about 4 percent of the students have chosen the PIN option.

Several schools using iMeal have seen increases in the number of students taking advantage of free and reduced-price meals, Foulk said.

At Litchfield Middle School, for example, she said the proportion of eligible students taking advantage of free lunches increased 6 percentage points -- from 77 percent to 83 percent -- between October of 2003 and October of 2004. Similarly, the percentage of the school's students receiving reduced-priced lunches rose from 63 percent to 73 percent during the same period.

School leaders think additional Akron schools could become eligible for federal Title 1 funding in the next school year. This funding is doled out based -- among other factors -- on the percentage of students receiving free and reduced-priced lunches.

Parents who do not want their children fingerprinted may obtain an opt-out form in the school office or cafeteria, or by calling the district's child nutrition office at 330-761-1335.