Security lapses on school campuses are a real threat and a growing problem in today’s world. Improve security at your school by updating the visitor sign-in process, which often fails to provide sufficient visitor identity information, and replace it with an automated ID card scanning solution. Ensure that, along with the visitor’s name, date, and time of entry, you also have their address, driver’s license number, and basic physical description in your system. With a driver’s license scanner added to your school security system software, you can do just that. Additionally, watchlist integration can check each visitor against national or internal databases to reduce the likelihood that known high-risk or dangerous individuals gain entry to your facilities.
Is your school still using antiquated paper attendance tracking and manual visitor logbooks? In addition to increasing safety, modern attendance tracking software can save time and money for teachers and schools alike. Using the existing student and staff ID cards on your campus, upgrade your school tracking system by incorporating magnetic stripe, barcode reader, or proximity smart card technologies. Attendance tracking software increases accuracy with immediate transmission to a central location, offering the ability to quickly compile attendance data from which you can learn if certain classes routinely struggle with attendance problems, and which students, if any, are frequently tardy to class or absent. The data can be as individualized or campus-wide as you’d like, so you can learn about developing or potential problems before it’s too late! Depending on your school’s policy, you can also automatically notify parents, print tardy notices, and issue warnings.
Schools and Educational institutions can save money by using a single photo ID card for multiple applications. Student ID cards serve first and foremost as a form of identification, but can also be used for school food service account management, computer and technology facility access, secure access control, and tracking student activity and attendance.
With an on-site photo ID system, student, faculty, staff, and visitor IDs can be produced on demand using photo ID printers, with very little wait time. Students can have their photos taken and receive their printed ID cards within minutes, without involving an outside vendor or the time and cost of dealing with one.
Plastic ID badges serve to visually identify students, staff, and visitors at a glance. There are countless techniques for adding visual verification and security to your school photo ID cards.
A basic level of security can be incorporated into your ID cards simply within the ID card design, but rather than just putting a photo on a plain white background, a practice which can easily be replicated fraudulently, consider using custom imagery or holographic ID card over-laminates on your personalized ID cards.
To further easily distinguish between students, faculty, and other staff, incorporate a color-coding system into your card design, and be sure to use self-expiring temporary visitor badges for campus visitors. These temporary ID cards cannot be reused after the day they were issued and visually appear to have expired after their allotted time (1 hour, 1 week, 1 month, etc.).
Multi-use ID cards, such as magnetic name badges and those with a printed barcode, can be used to manage your school lunch program and your library ID card checkout system.
Any readable technology on a student ID card can store student information such as emergency contacts, medical history (medications or allergies), and lunch account balances. With multi-use ID cards, schools can track student attendance and transaction data from school cafeteria purchases.
School lunch programs can be automated using encoded technology on ID cards to store student account numbers. When a lunch is “purchased,” and an ID card is swiped through a card reader, the lunch amount is deducted from the card’s account balance. A magnetic stripe reader, such as a scanner or swiper, would be used with a magnetic stripe card. In addition to managing lunch accounts, a magnetic stripe can be used for authorized entry to school activities, healthy vending machine purchases, and activity fee payments.
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