PLUMSTED - The school district has installed a new security system that will check whether visitors to the schools are registered sex offenders.

Called the Teacher-Parent Authorization Security System (T-PASS) With Sex Offender Lookup - put out by Eyemetric Identity Systems - the new system will track visitors and people checking students out of school, Superintendent Jerry North said Monday.

The system photographs each visitor and scans the name and address of the visitor's driver's license, he said. It then prints a label with the person's photograph and a photograph of the staff member being visited. Then, it creates a centralized database of visitors, he added.
"It allows us to see a snapshot of the visitors in the school at any given moment," he said.
In addition, the system runs the person's name against a database of registered sex offenders, and "if something gets red-flagged, we would just not allow that person into the school," he said, adding that school officials would notify parents if someone attempted to pick up their child.

Another feature of the system is that if a child is picked up before the normal dismissal time, either a text-message or e-mail is sent to the parents, informing them of who has picked up their child, he said.

School officials may not always know the other people besides the parents who are listed on students' emergency cards, and this could help them, he said.
He said it's extremely rare that a sex offender would come to get a child at the school, but "we're always trying to come up with something that allows people to feel that their children are safe when they're here," Mr. North said.

Hopefully, "this is just another way of making them (parents) feel at ease, to make sure their children receive a safe and thorough education," he added.
The new $3,000 security system was installed earlier this month at all of the district's schools and will be ready in time for September, he said.
""The system will work with the other security technology it already has in place, Mr. North said.

In April 2003, the district became the nation's first to employ iris recognition technology for security purposes. Paid for by a $293,000 grant from the National Institute of Justice, the iris-reading system mounted 11 cameras at the entrances of the schools. The cameras scan the eyes of visitors and staff to compare against internal records.

While the iris scan just keeps people from getting into the building, the new system will provide another level of security once the visitors are buzzed in, to ensure "they are who they say they are," Mr. North said.

In addition to T-PASS, the school will have new cameras, worth $21,000, installed inside and outside of the district schools, also in time for the next school year, he said.