Students will never achieve their full potential in an environment laced with fear.

In 2013, an inter-governmental agency group including the U.S. Department of Education and the FBI stated, “Families and communities expect schools to keep their children and youth safe from threats and hazards. Each school day, our nation’s schools are entrusted to provide a safe and healthy learning environment for approxi-mately 55 million elementary and secondary school students.”

The key to providing a safe, secure school environment is an e�cient and cost e�ective method of identifying everyone on campus; administrators need an auto-mated, cost-e�ective, easily implemented solution.

Knowing Who’s Who

One of the most straightforward ways a school district can help secure its population is with visual identi�ca-tion. Smart ID Cards, typically worn on lanyards, are imprinted with a person’s photo and unique campus identi�ers. A custom-made Smart ID Card can quickly establish who should be on campus and who should not.

A recent article written by Education World Magazine states, “Several administrators told Education World they adopted ID badges over the past few years as part of an e�ort to upgrade security; some changes were spurred by school shootings. The recent terrorist attacks, child abductions, and child custody battles have heightened administrators’ security consciousness.”

Along with an at-a-glance con�rmation that a person has permission to be in the building, potential lawbreak-ers could be deterred, simply because they’ll be easily noticed when on campus.

Putting Smart ID Cards to Work

The National Crime Prevention Council states, “An identi�cation card system…deters individuals with no legitimate business in the school from attempting to enter the building and reduces opportunities for on-campus crimes, violence, and drug dealing by unauthorized outsiders.”

Stickers, generic passes, and plain ID cards do little to improve a school’s reporting and actual security. Basic cards are not secure, swipe cards break down over time, and the majority of these older ID card systems use spreadsheets to maintain names, addresses, etc., which is static, time consuming, and cumbersome. Modern Smart ID Card software imports data instantly, and cards can be activated and deactivated on demand.

Smart ID Cards with advanced software carry a chip that is encoded with a unique ID number assigned to one individual. It is the back-end computer that maintains detailed information on the student or teacher to whom the ID is issued, so administering the program is simple and straightforward.

Some Smart ID Cards use the tightest international security standards (PCI, FISMA, SSAE16), which are the same that banks, credit card companies, and others use; individual information is secure and the IDs are almost impossible to replicate. Touch-based passive ID cards do not infringe on student or administrator privacy.

For students, faculty, and sta�, Smart ID Cards are usually worn on a lanyard which can be school-speci�c. Frequent guests can be issued a custom-printed, school-branded, card imprinted with “Volunteer,” or “Visitor,” which further strengthens visual identication.

Making K12 Schools Safer & More Secure

On-campus violence and crime is a common theme in today’s news. Schools are faced with the threat of active shooters, drug dealers lurking on the grounds, sex o�enders trolling events and parental abductors waiting for an opportunity to strike. Real threats are reported every day.

Some districts even provide their local police and �re departments with precinct- or school-speci�c Smart ID Cards that allow them immediate access into school buildings. Automated Administration

Technology advances with Smart ID Card Systems can make a host of administrative processes easier and more e�cient. Here are just a few examples of what’s already happening in school districts across the country:

Attendance: An automated ID Card System that gener-ates a list of late/absent students; the parents of those students are then called by an automated system that reports them as absent, making the process more streamlined so o�ce sta� can focus on other tasks. When school districts rely on Average Daily Attendance tallies, removing human error from the equation can mean a �nancial windfall for some districts.

Real Time Control and Tracking: Administrators view up-to-the-second attendance, give students speci�c door access, update students’ information, and a host of other activities, all from one management portal.

Cloud Control: Data resides virtually, in o�-site servers with backup systems in place, so if something happens, the data is safe and always available. Improvements are also very simple: because the program resides in one place, administrators upgrade in only one place, and added functionality can be transferred to every school instantly. This service-based process is streamlined and more cost e�ective.

Elizabeth Yates, on the National Education Association (NEA) website writes, “The lanyards are usually custom made with the school's name on them (and are in the school's colors). It has been an e�ective and simple tool to increase safety because it is easy to identify those adults in the school who are NOT sta�.”

An Expandable System

School districts can start with straightforward Smart ID Cards and add features at a later date when budgets or needs change.

For example, when paired with a reader, Smart ID Cards require a student to take an action, like tapping it on a screen, for the card to be read. Readers can be installed on buses, in the classroom, in the cafeteria, in the gym, or in the auditorium, so tracking students is extremely e�cient and provides real-time data. In fact, some con�gurations can process a thousand students in just minutes.

Additional modules can be added like Secure Door Access, Automated Classroom and Building Attendance, Visitor Management, and Cafeteria POS. These are available as simple and straightforward upgrades. Locking Down

With an additional Secure Door Access module, in the event of lock-down, a Smart ID Card System can provide administrators and police with actionable safety infor-mation and greater control over an entire campus. Smart ID Card Systems help ensure that:

• People authorized to be on campus are quicky recog-nizable. Students, teachers and volunteers wearing o�cial Smart ID Cards can be processed more e�ciently in the case of an evacuation or lock-down.

• An accurate location report is available on a tablet or computer that shows which sta� members and students used their card for attendance and therefore can be identi�ed in the building or in a speci�c room, which can help �rst responders react fast.

• Automated lock-down solutions can allow all doors in a building or across the district to be locked with a single command. This immediacy improves reaction time and can save lives.

Classroom: Students tap their cards upon entering a classroom, so teachers don’t have to take attendance and substitutes always have an accurate count. Children tap out if they leave the class early and tap into the main o�ce/ nurse/guidance o�ce, etc., which makes student movement easy to track.

Visitor Management: When a visitor arrives, there are modules that determine if he or she has been to the school before. If they have, an ID label can be printed; if they aren’t in the database, the system determines if there are any district-de�ned exclusionary alerts regard-ing the person, at the same time checking for a match against the sexual o�ender database. An automatic alert is sent to the district, making the school even more secure.

Here are just a few of the bene�ts of a Smart ID Card System:

Location and Time Clock Management: Sta� members use their ID Cards to open locked doors to enter school buildings or portable classrooms. Students with disabili-ties or injuries use their cards to access building eleva-tors. Facility sta� members use Time Clock kiosks to sign in and out of work, which keeps track of their time spent, their current location, and any overtime hours they work.

Students: Smart ID Cards are connected to the student’s ID number (SIS) and records. Depending on the software and modules in place, cards can be used at cafeteria registers and can facilitate free and reduced lunch purchases without overtly distinguishing those students. Cards can be used in libraries to check out books, at school stores to purchase supplies, and at special events.It is the database that carries all student information including personal schedules; hallway monitoring solutions let mobile devices verify a student’s schedule and issue on-the-spot directives for transgressions.

Accountability and Control: Smart ID Cards are tapped for events that take place in buildings after school and/or at night. Students tap in to attend a sporting event, dance, concert, or any other school-sponsored program, strengthening accountability, safety and

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control, and providing event administrators real-time attendee information.

A�ordability: There are subsidies available to some school districts, especially those that are underfunded. Some vendors have government contract status that ensures the best price for Smart ID Cards. Also, in some states, a percentage of the purchase in the form of aid to the district is returned on an annual basis.

The Time is Now

On the NEA Website, a teacher at Raymore-Peculiar High School in Peculiar, MO writes:

“Since we've been wearing our [ID cards], parents feel more comfortable coming up to a teacher and asking questions because they know we belong in the building. We have also made cards for students who are teacher aides, cadet teachers and tutors. These students go into the elementary buildings and are easily recognized by their ID card.”

Implementing or upgrading to Smart ID Cards is a straight-forward and economical way to provide basic security to any school district, as well as provide a gateway to ad-vanced options that can help save time and money.