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Starting over

Starting over Starting over

Parent concerns prompt school to review finger scanning for lunch lines

Seconds add up. At least that was what the school district administration hoped when they spent $3,000 to add a fingerprint scanner option to speed up flow in the cafeteria lunch lines.

Medford Area Senior High School principal Jill Lybert told members of the Medford School Board Monday night the hope was to cut lunch line transactions to being one to two seconds each and potentially be able to shave five to 10 minutes off of time spent in the serving lines in order to give students more time to eat.

What the school administration didn’t count on was the backlash from parents concerned that their children’s fingerprints are being kept on file by the district and the potential for data breaches down the road.

“If I could go back in time, it should have come here first,” said district administrator Pat Sullivan to school board members.

He explained that since he came to the district 15 years ago, they have been See MEDFORD on page 4 working on ways to speed up the lunch lines. He said they have looked at adding a third lunch, but that doesn’t work with the class schedules at the high school. The district had previously sought to expand the space in the cafeteria to add a third serving line, but that was scrapped after the referendum failed and there is no room in the current layout to do this.

Sullivan said they looked at the scanner system because it is used in other districts and it was comparatively inexpensive to implement. He said they should have brought it to the board first and sent information home to parents before beginning to implement it.

As it was, a number of students were suspicious of why the district was scanning a fingerprint and taking those concerns home to parents. Parents then contacted school board members with concerns about the issue and if their children’s biometric data was being stored and the potential for it to be compromised.

School district technology director Dennis Hinderliter explained how the system worked and assured board members that it is not storing fingerprints. He said students would scan their finger with that being translated into a code. In the future when the student scanned their finger the system would compare it to a number of points of similarity and that it did not store any additional data.

“The code cannot be reverse-engineered to a fingerprint,” Lybert explained. She said they are not proposing storing any student biometric information. She also emphasized that students had the option to either use the scanner or enter their code and that no one would be forced to use the scanner.

Hinderliter said the system was the second-best option to speed up the serving lines. The first option would be for the students to have their ID cards on them to scan. Students currently have that option on can enter a personal identification number. Lybert said the issue is that kids, being kids, every fourth of fifth student enters their PIN wrong or forgets their ID. “[This] can really slow it down,” Lybert said.

Board member John Zuleger said he felt there needed to be some personal responsibility on the part of the students. “If they can’t remember their card, how are they ever going to remember to pay a mortgage or a rent bill?” he asked.

He suggested a solution would be that if the students didn’t have their ID cards they wouldn’t be able to have lunch. “You’re 16 years old, you can’t remember an ID card?” he asked.

Sullivan said the district would not be able to do that and it would cause an uproar among parents. Board president Dave Fleegel noted that the they have also been asked by parents to teach students more responsibility.

“It sounds good, but it is not practical,” said board member Don Everhard saying denying meals to people without their ID would not work.

“I am not sure why we are talking about this,” said board member Brian Hallgren, noting the district has been looking for solutions to the school lunch issues for years and this is a low-cost option.

Fleegel responded that they are talking about it because it is important for the district to be responsive to the concerns of parents and that they should have been informed before it was implemented.

Board member Kurt Werner questioned why instead of this that they couldn’t find a way to add 10 minutes to the lunch schedule. Lybert said it has been this schedule at 26 minutes per lunch period since she came to the district 18 years ago.

Werner noted the system seemed to work fine when he was a student in the high school in the 1990s when there were more students there. “What has changed from then to now?” he asked.

Board member Steve Deml noted that at the time they were in school, the students had to buy lunch tickets and they were just putting tickets in a box which was faster than a code.

Everhard said he could sympathize with the parents who had concerns over the scanners. “It is kind of an anti- government thing,” Everhard said, noting there were also concerns about data being put out. However, he noted the students are already voluntarily putting data out with social media applications.

“They are not really living off the grid,” he said, noting that student cellphones are releasing to the world more biometric information than what is being stored in the school system.

Fleegel said it was about parents not being aware and not knowing they had an option to not have their students use it. He said the questions were why students were being fingerprinted and the first thing people think of is criminal activities. He also raised doubt about the assertion the number could never be reverse engineered to a fingerprint. “Somebody, someplace is smart enough to reverse engineer it,” he said.

Lybert said they have now sent a letter to parents explaining the system and that they would be wiping the data they have and starting over with students and parents who consent to participate. Zuleger suggested they wipe the system and wait to implement until next school year.

Board members disagreed with that extreme of a step and approved having high school administration wipe the system and give parents and students the option to opt-in to have their finger scan added to the system or to continue using the passcode. Zuleger voted against the motion.

High School addition

A major change will come to the high school this summer with the addition of new office spaces and the remodeling of the existing main office along with security upgrades.

Board members approved moving ahead with the $1.7 million project utilizing budget dollars that were freed up by applying federal grant dollars to other portions of the school budget as well as from fund balance.

Last month, board members had voted to move forward with a design for the addition. Representatives from Findorff brought back a layout that included an addition that would cost about $1.3 million. In addition there would be remodeling of the existing office space including bringing the nurse’s office bathroom up to ADA compliance and reconfiguring other spaces the total renovations to the existing office would cost about $346,000.

Board members discussed where the additional $300,000 in costs for the project would come from with Brooks proposing that it be assigned to fund balance at this point, but she noted they could underspend this year’s budget and be able to apply those budget dollars to it also.

“I would ask for it to come out of fund balance for funding purposes,” she said, noting that there is close to $7 million in fund balance which is about 20% of operations. Board policy seeks to have the fund balance over 15% of operational costs.

Fleegel said he was not opposed to the idea of the project, but just was not in favor of it right now until the district had an answer for the FEMA grant. He said he would much rather put the money to the technology education classrooms than office space. “I don’t argue that it would make it better,” he said, noting that he felt it was better to spend money on classrooms.

Deml said he was confident that if the district received the FEMA grant they would make sure that project was able to be completed one way or another. “I think we would find a way,” he said. It was noted that the earliest the FEMA project could be done was 2024 while this work could be done this summer.

Board member Aemus Balsis also supported the project noting that it is doing what the residents want of living within the district’s means while taking on projects piece by piece.

Board members approved moving forward with the project.

In other business board members:

  Formally approved the annual audit. Finance director Audra Brooks reported it was a clean audit with no issues. The only change from past years was that a governmental accounting rule change requires districts to list property that is leased as a liability on their books. This is still expensed yearly, but is just reported differently now.

  Had a final review of a proposed storm shelter addition plan which would allow for additional tech ed classrooms and physical education space. The district is applying for a grant from FEMA which, if successful, would cover $5 million of the approximately $8 million cost. The district will not know until July or August 2023 if the grant is approved. The project is dependent on the district receiving the grant. The district has about $700,000 from community pledges to the project if the grant is approved and would look to utilize funds that have been set aside for building projects with the potential of going to voters if needed.


Members of the Medford School Board on Monday approved moving ahead with an expansion and remodelling of the front office area at Medford Area Senior High School. The project cost is estimated at about $1.7 million. The district will use funds that were freed up due to applying federal grant money to existing budget areas. If needed the district will tap into its fund balance for the remaining costs. The project will address security needs in the main entrance funneling visitors through the office rather than directly into the main cooridor. The work is expected to be done this summer.Design by Findorff/PRA

The Medford school district will have to wait and see if it is successful at getting a federal FEMA grant to cover a large portion of a proposed storm shelter addition at the rear of the high school. The board gave their OK to a final revised plan for the project before the grant paperwork is submitted. The project is dependent on the district receiving the grant funds. The district will receive word in July or August about if it is successful. While the federal funds are to provide storm shelter space, the district would utilize the space for tech ed shop, office areas and a gym for physical education classes.Design by Findorff/PRA
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