Jr. high starts using fingerprint scanner at lunch

February 3, 2009

Students at Turner Junior High School used their fingerprints to pay for lunch Monday.

District 117’s new Skyward Point of Sale fingerprint-scanning, electronic payment system began with the school’s four lunch periods.

The school board voted in September to purchase the system which, Superintendent Les Huddle believes, will cut the amount of time students stand in lunch lines, give those who are on free and reduced cost lunch programs more anonymity, and save money by reducing the number of hours the district will need to employ cafeteria staff.

Whether the touted benefits of Skyward will come true remains to be seen.

Monday at Turner, students purchasing lunch collected food and moved through their lunch lines to the cash registers like normal.

When it came time to pay, most – about 75 percent of students – lightly pressed their index fingers on small fingerprint-reading devices connected to each cashier’s computer.

The fingerprints were translated by the device into numbers that corresponded with each student’s individual money account. Students then chose whether to receive cash change or to leave the balance of their purchases on their respective accounts stored in the computer system.

Students who had not registered in time for Monday or who do not plan on ever using the electronic fingerprint system were allowed to use cash at lunch.

Seventh-graders Abby Simpson, Alex Homer, Madison White/Shipp, Katie Colwell, Sean Hopper and Emily Ford all went through the lunch with the new system Monday. They all understood how the system worked and said they through the new way to pay for lunch was “cool.”

“It works kind of like a credit card,” explained Sean.

The students agreed that, although the lines were unusually slow Monday, they didn’t mind, because they knew the system was still being broken-in.

Principal Beth Brockschmidt and her staff admitted the first day with Skyward was hectic and lunch lines ran slowly. For example, the forth-hour lunch period ran about 10 minutes over into the fifth-hour period.

“But,” Mrs. Brockschmidt added, “by fifth hour, kids were going through faster and every (period) it got better.”

Cafeteria cashier Kelly Jacobs, who spent all four lunch periods at the new registers, agreed that the new lunch system got easier as the day progressed.

“It’s pretty easy to use, and pretty self-explanatory,” Ms. Jacobs said as she tapped the touch screen that came with the new Skyward cash registers.

Melissa Johansson, a customer service representative from Skyward who supervised at Turner Monday said she thought the things went well for a first day.

“(The workers at Turner) are very quick learners,” she said.

Miss Johansson said Turner Junior High students should be prepared for about a month of slower service until everyone gets used to the transition from cash-only registers to the new software system.

Things may speed up, however, if students who use the electronic accounts are discouraged from asking for their change in cash.

The Skyward system will go into use at Jacksonville High School in about two weeks.

The system’s hardware and software for the two schools cost the district just under $24,000.



Journal-Courier, Jacksonville, Illinois
Katie Anderson