Dora official: Finger scan system not fingerprinting

Shauna Wade has three children in Dora schools.

Wade got the news that something new was happening at the southern Roosevelt County school system directly from her kids.

“My kids came home and they said, ‘Oh my gosh they took our fingerprints,’” Wade said.

Wade said she called other parents and no one else knew anything about the alleged gathering of fingerprints.

But Dora Superintendent Brandon Hays said what was actually going on was the school system was implementing “finger scanning,” not fingerprinting.

“What bothers me is they didn’t ask,” Wade said.

Wade said she called members of the Dora School Board.

“They knew nothing about it,” Wade said.

Wade said less than 10 parents came to the school board meeting of Jan. 10 to voice their opinion on the new “finger scanning” school lunch ID program.

Wade said she believes more parents would have come if the school’s Christmas program wasn’t happening that night. The program was held Jan. 10 because it was postponed from December.

“I still don’t like it,” Wade said of the finger scanning process. “I went to the school and opted my kids out of the finger scanning.”

Wade said she believes the school system violated students’ Fourth Amendment rights.

“Search and seizure and they can’t do that without a court order,” Wade said. “They took our parental rights away from us.”

After learning of concerns, Hays issued a news release that the previous cafeteria system required scanning an individual student’s barcode when they received a meal from the cafeteria line.

Hays said that process was time-consuming and led to human error. So many schools in the surrounding area, including Dora, have converted to electronic finger scanners to ensure accuracy and increase the speed of the serving lines, Hays said.

Hays said the system was created by Educational Biometric Technology and has been used in some schools since 1997.

Bob Engen is the president and CEO of Educational Biometric Technology.

“We have about a half-dozen or so school systems in New Mexico who use our technology,” Engen said. “We have over 2,000 school systems nationwide.”

Engen said his finger scan system is “true protection” from identity theft.

“We don’t store data, we’re not in the cloud, we’re not on the internet,” Engen said.

The system does not store fingerprints because a “fingerprint” is not taken.

“When we enroll a finger, a variable amount of measurements and the fingerprint style is taken. These measurements and style of fingerprint get converted to a number that gets encrypted and stored,” Hays wrote in his news release.

Hays said if the finger scan is decrypted and given to someone, this someone cannot reverse the process since many variables are not present. In other words, it cannot be turned back into the fingerprint image and used.

Hays wrote “finger scans” are a digital image of a finger that identifies several unique points that are converted into a unique binary number, a combination of ones and zeroes.

Hays said at this time, there is no controlling federal law regarding whether schools can collect and use finger scans.

New Mexico, like the federal government, does not limit or regulate schools collecting and using finger scans.

Hays said New Mexico also does not require schools to notify or obtain consent from parents before collecting finger scans or enrolling them in the school’s cafeteria system.

But Hays also said the Dora schools are giving parents an opportunity to opt out of this method and have provided an alternative method for entering their student identification number.

There are legal protections in place to keep finger scans private according to Hays.

“We want to reassure parents that the finger scans that we have enrolled are protected like other personally identifiable information that is in their students’ education records,” Hays said.