ID Badges in the News - School Safety & Security Policy
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1. January 12, 2008 Cordelle Dispatch - By Carmen Lindsey ID Badges Create Safe Environment in Schools www.cordeledispatch.com/local/local_story_012190910.html
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January 17th, 2008 at 1:59 pm
Very interesting article: Published January 12, 2008 07:09 pm - By CARMEN LINDSEY
ID badges create safe environment
CORDELE — In an effort to maintain a safe and secure environment conductive to learning, Crisp County High School has implemented an identification policy.
This policy states all persons must wear ID badges at all times while on campus. All teachers and students must wear their ID badges in a highly visible location. All students must wear a lanyard with ID badges around their necks.
“Our school is unique because we’re close to I-75,” said CCHS Principal Toriano Gilbert. “Anyone can walk into the school. These badges give everyone, even the students, a chance to know who is supposed to be on campus.”
Gilbert said he can forsee no problems with the policy. Things are going well. An average of ten people a day forget to wear badges, but that is somewhat to be expected after only a week in operation.
“This small number is really amazing to me,” Gilbert said. The school has approximately 11,033 students.
“Our students are to be commended,” he said. “They’re taking ownership for the safety of the school.”
Darius Gunn, a junior at CCHS, said he has no problem remembering to wear his badge. “I’ve barely taken it off. It’s like jewelry. I keep it on.”
CCHS is the only school in the Crisp County School System which has initiated this policy. “Maybe other schools will come on board, but that’s a decision of each school’s administration,” said Gilbert.
Assistant Principals Fredrick Richard and Hubert Adams played a big part in establishing the policy. Before approaching Gilbert with their idea, they located other schools in the area that had implented the use of ID badges, identified their successes and any cautions they discovered and researched the logistics of student identification.
“They did a lot of the leg work, talked to other administrations in the area, and approached with number of students in our school,” Gilbert said.
Once they approached Gilbert, and he approved the idea, they voiced their desires to the Crisp County Board of Education. The Board of Education voted to accept CCHS Principal Gilbert’s recommendation on Dec. 11, 2007.
ID badges create safe environment
“The first thing is the safety of the students,” said Adams. With a growing focus on school violence, many schools are turning to this measure to ensure the safety of their students and staff. Some feel a simple photo ID is a small concession to keeping children safe and secure.
“If I can see a badge dangling from one of the students, I know they’re mine,” said Richard. “It helps us out a lot.”
Other than the most obvious benefit, ID badges are inexpensive, decrease disciplinary problems within the school through easy and accurate identification of students, make it possible to address other students and teachers personally, and increase efficiency by integrating programs for library materials, food service, and door access.
ID badges with magnetic strips or bar codes can be used to monitor attendance, purchase school lunches, check out library books, or grant access to restricted areas of school buildings.
Students who refuse or neglect to wear their ID badges will be given an immediate consequence. In case of loss or damage, students are required to pay for a temporary badge for $2, which is good for only one day, and/or they can purchase a replacement badge for $5 and a new lanyard for $1.
Signs can be seen all over the school demonstrating the proper way to wear ID badges.
The following guidelines have been established to make sure students, faculty and staff are in compliance with the high school’s initiative:
1. Every student and employee is required to obtain an official Crisp County High School ID badge.
2. IDs must be visible at all times.
3. IDs must be worn by the student it identifies only.
4. Students cannot borrow and/or exchange their ID badge with anyone.
5. ID badges may not be obstructed/defaced with any items (i.e. no stickers, tape, writing, etc.)
6. Students who forget their badges at home must purchase a temporary badge in the guidance office. Temporary ID badges will be sold for $2, and they must be worn on the left side of the student’s chest.
7. Students will be allowed to purchase up to 3 temporary IDs. After the third temporary ID, the student will be required to purchase a new $5 ID badge or be subject to an increased level of disciplinary action.
8. Students who are repeatedly in violation of the school ID badge policy will be issued disciplinary actions, inclusive of out-of-school suspension.
January 17th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
Very interesting article: South Florida Sun-Sentinel Editorial Board - January 7, 2008
Coach IDs good idea, but parents have a role in youth safety, too
ISSUE: South Florida cities require photo ID badges for volunteer coaches.It used to be a parent who wanted to spend more time with his child could just sign up for a local league and coach a bunch of kids — free of suspicion.
But those days are gone. Now, volunteer coaches in some cities throughout Broward and Palm Beach counties are required to wear photo ID badges to prove they’re not child molesters or abusers. They have to submit to fingerprinting and background checks to assure they’re not criminals.
Unfortunately, such safeguards are necessary due to the epidemic of child abuse and pedophilia in our society.
Cities are wise to take pro-active measures, making sure children are safe, no matter how costly or inconvenient. And they are right to worry about potential lawsuits should a child be molested by a city volunteer. It’s just the world we live in.
South Florida municipalities now requiring ID badges include Fort Lauderdale, Pembroke Pines, Sunrise, Lauderdale Lakes, Riviera Beach, West Palm Beach and Tamarac. In Hollywood, which started the practice two years ago, park employees also patrol the fields to make sure people working with children wear the badges. Wellington requires only background checks.
State Sen. Jeremy Ring, D-Parkland, has proposed a bill requiring all youths sports volunteers to be fingerprinted. And the National Recreation and Park Association runs Social Security numbers through criminal background databases.
All are good safeguards, and should be implemented statewide. But parents and city officials must be careful not to be lulled into a false sense of security. Even the best protective measures won’t be able to weed out every child molester.
Parents must do their part, keeping a close eye on people who work in youth programs. It’s ultimately their responsibility to keep their children safe.
BOTTOM LINE: Safety measures are good, but keep a watchful eye.
January 17th, 2008 at 2:03 pm
One more interesting article. Reference: sun-sentinel.com
(USPublicRecords.com)
More Cities Requiring Background Checks, ID Badges for Youth Sports Coaches
Youth sports volunteers are subject to safety measure
She’s more than happy to be a team mom for her sons, so Angela Walker is willing to participate in the latest attempt by cities to keep the fields safe.
She wears an ID badge, showing that she has cleared a criminal background check. So does every coach and anyone else who comes into contact with the children.
“It gives you a sense of security to know they’re in good hands,” said Walker, whose sons play football, basketball and baseball. “You can’t just allow anybody and everybody around your child.”
Riviera Beach joins West Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale and other cities that started ID badge programs this year. Hollywood began requiring ID badges for its more than 600 volunteer coaches more than two years ago.
The badges are one more safety measure in youth sports. Particularly in large cities, the children and the coaches don’t know each other, and an adult with a poor track record could be in a position he or she shouldn’t be.
Riviera Beach Parks and Recreation Director John Williams said most of the volunteers are like Walker, and cooperate.
“They understand why we’re doing it,” he said. “After all, most of them are parents, too.”
The cities fear lawsuits if they don’t require the background checks, because they could be held responsible should a volunteer molest a child, hit one or give one a beer. The logic: Youth coaches and other volunteers are “unpaid staff” approved by the city.
But then another problem surfaced: How do you know that the guy on the field coaching is a cleared coach, rather than just some dad (with a criminal record) who appears one day “just to help pitch in.”
So Hollywood parks staff walks the fields daily, making sure coaches and other volunteers who are near children, such as team moms, have their badges. They carry a master list of approved people and politely ask those who haven’t been cleared to take a seat in the stands.
That includes, say, a dad who’s just trying to provide an extra pair of hands on the field.
“Most of them understand,” says David Vazquez, the city’s sports coordinator. “But honestly, sometimes that conversation goes better than others.”
Meanwhile, Wellington runs background checks but doesn’t use badges, which can create a false sense of security, Leisure Services Director Jim Barnes says.
Instead, the focus should be on preventing future offenses, he says. That means sports leagues must monitor their volunteers and parents should keep an eye on their children and not regard coaches as baby sitters.
Eleanor Warmack, executive director of the Florida Recreation and Park Association, agrees that parents shouldn’t give too much weight to the screenings, which have become more prevalent because of the Internet.” There are 101 ways to abuse a child, and not all of them go through the criminal system,” she says.
Warmack estimates ID badges are being used by fewer than 10 percent of Florida cities, and she supports them as long as parks officials make sure that everyone wears them.
Meanwhile, she says coaches should be fingerprinted, rather than just having their information punched into a computer. State Sen. Jeremy Ring, D-Parkland, proposed a bill late in the session requiring all youth sports volunteers be fingerprinted. He says he’ll try to push it through when the Legislature resumes.
Meanwhile, the National Recreation and Park Association has a partnership with Michael Pfahl, whose program, Operation TLC Squared, prefers running a person’s Social Security number through databases of criminal records.
He argues that not only is a database check cheaper — usually about $20, compared with about $40 for fingerprinting — but it also has a faster turnaround time.
The company, which runs volunteers’ information through databases, has conducted 3,287 background checks this year, and about 7 percent of the checks (225) disqualified a candidate, Pfahl said. But only two checks yielded volunteers with sex offenses.
Just the threat of the check itself, and being found out, is a great deterrent, says Gladys Pentilla, a Fort Lauderdale recreation program coordinator. Of the 653 sports volunteers Fort Lauderdale has fingerprinted this year, only 34 have been rejected, she says.
Badges have been in place for 10 years in the American Youth Football League, based at 15 parks in South Florida, AYFL President Laney Stearns says. But the badges were as much for decorum — a team is allowed only six coaches on the field — as for screening, he says.
Mitch Grant, a baseball coach at Driftwood Park in Hollywood, says he has no problem with the ID badges, but he doesn’t like that several coaches who had been around for years were disqualified when the city took over screening from Driftwood Youth Sports, he says.
And children are as apt to be abused in off-the-field situations, such as a team party at a parent’s house, he says.
“Actually, I think for the city it’s all about liability,” Grant says. “They don’t want to get sued.”
Background checks have become a standard in the recreation field, says Ian McGregor a risk management consultant in Blaine, Wash., who specializes in parks and recreation.
They go with parks’ other recent additions, such as lightning prediction devices, which warn park patrons to clear the field before the first bolt is in sight, and defibrillators, in case someone has heart trouble.
“If nine out of 10 cities are doing something and you’re not, then you should take a look at doing it,” he says. But the overall approach should be toward participant safety, he says, not avoiding lawsuits.
McGregor called the ID badge trend “interesting” but overall wouldn’t necessarily provide a city with more legal protection: At this point there is no industry standard established as to how cities will enforce the program.
“To me, the bigger issue is, ‘Are you doing the checks?’” he says. “Whether you wear a badge or not isn’t a big deal.”
September 19th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
ID badges, video cameras beef up security at Bozeman High
“Badges? We ain’t got no badges! We don’t need no badges! I don’t have to show you no stinkin’ badges!”
–film “The Treasure of Sierra Madre”
By GAIL SCHONTZLER Chronicle Staff Writer
Bozeman High School students may have never heard the famous lines from the 1948 Humphrey Bogart movie, but they will soon be keenly aware of badges, as the Bozeman School District plans to require every student to wear or carry ID badges at school and after-school events.
Security has also been taken up a notch at Bozeman High with the recent installation of motion-activated digital video-recording cameras throughout the school.
“It’s part of our safety plan,” Superintendent Kirk Miller said last week. “When you are proactive, students and adults and anybody in the school knows the cameras could pick up anything. That’s a deterrent.”
Miller added he hopes the cameras, purchased with a grant connected with the Bozeman Police Department, will cut down on thefts.
Requiring 1,900 high school students to wear or carry identification badges is simply considered “good practice” in education today, he said. Hospitals and other public organizations require their staffs to wear badges. For the past year, the School District has required its 750 employees to wear ID badges on lanyards around their necks.
“That’s the way the world is today,” Miller said. “The world is different after 9/11.”
The hard plastic ID badges will have students’ names and photos and be color-coded to show their year in school.
Bozeman High has always issued student ID cards, which students carry in their wallets, pockets, purses or backpacks. The difference is that students haven’t been required to carry their IDs when they leave the classroom. Wearing them on lanyards will be optional.
The company that took students’ school photos last week will provide the IDs in about a month.
Bozeman High students had mixed reactions to the new requirement.
Emily Hogin, 15, a sophomore, said she understands that school officials want to prevent someone with bad intentions from entering the school, but added, “It’s kind of ridiculous. We live in little Bozeman, Montana. It’s kind of overkill.”
Hannah Galloway, 17, a senior, said student ID cards are great because they let students get discounts on movies and ski passes, but if she had to wear one all the time, “I think it’s completely ridiculous.”
The school is already strict about requiring students to have passes if they’re in the halls during class times, Galloway said. She doubted badges would be effective at identification, since students are so packed together in the halls, and are likely to lose or forget them.
Freshman Kaitlin Webb, 14, heading home after school with her trombone, said she doesn’t like the idea of wearing badges.
“It makes our school seem like creepy big ones, in big cities,” she said. “A lot of people don’t like it. … It kinda makes us feel like they’re treating us like criminals.”
She added some girls don’t like the idea of wearing ID badges because, “It clashes with your outfit.”
“I think it’s kind of ridiculous,” said Rachael Camps, 15. “I don’t think the problem is that big of a deal that we have to wear badges.”
Cody Combs, 17, student body president, said many students have the wrong impression that students will be required to wear the badges.
“Just like in the past, we’ll have them on us,” Combs said. “Many students are very confused on that n that we’d have to openly wear them. Let’s hope it doesn’t get to that point.”
Combs said he agrees with installation of the new video cameras as a way to increase safety.
“They’re not a Big Brother sort of thing,” Combs said. “They make sure anybody who visits the school or does anything unruly knows there’s a way to go back and check their stories.”
Miller said school officials have specifically said they don’t plan to monitor the video cameras, but if an incident occurs, “it’s legal to look at what happened in that area.”
Miller said the plan to require ID badges was shared a year ago with the Parent Advisory Council, which supported the idea, included in the student handbook and explained at the opening-day assembly.
“It’s a good safety measure,” Miller said. “It will allow us to identify students in school, and clearly identify if they’re in school and shouldn’t be.”
He added it will also help students develop a feeling of ownership in their school.
Asked if students in younger grades will someday be required to wear badges, Miller said, “We’re phasing it in.”
Darrel Rud, executive director of the School Administrators of Montana, said ID badges are growing in popularity around the nation and he thinks it’s a good idea for safety.
In Montana, Rud said, he has only heard of them being used in Great Falls at the alternative high school, while C.M. Russell High at one point had badges, but doesn’t currently.
September 19th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
Students To Wear IDs
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MEXICO - Mexico High School now requires students and faculty to wear school IDs at all times when attending school and school events.
“Number one the main concern is safety. It allows us to know who is in our building, who is on our property, and whether or not they belong here. Having that as a visible reminder for our students and for us,” Principal Chris Ferguson said.
While no particular security incident prompted the ID card program, senior Kara Safford says the IDs do make her feel safe.
“I think it’s nice that the faculty is concerned about our safety. Most of the time as a student you don’t think, ‘Oh no one is going to come into our school.’ So it’s nice they think ahead about that,” Safford said.
The student IDs will not only help with safety, but will designate which privilege program the students are in. A colored sticker on the back of each ID shows where the students can eat lunch: in the cafeteria, the gym or outside. It also lets teachers know if they need academic support to help keep grades up.
“It takes into account their behavior, their grades, their discipline, everything, kind of a total package,” Ferguson said.
Safford said the student body seems fine with the IDs, but some students do have one complaint.
“Some of the girls are like, ‘Oh it’s going to clash with my outfit’,” Safford said.
However, students can choose their own lanyards in place of Mexico’s red and black color scheme.
Failure to wear the ID can land a student in detention or even suspension.
Reported by: Lisa Russell
September 19th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
Security stepped up at Adams 12 high schools
Andrew Apodaca, a senior at Legacy High School, displays his school-issued lanyard Aug. 22. Students and staff at high schools in the Adams 12 school district are now required to wear IDs on their outermost garment at all times.
Provided by: Joseph Kirchmer
Contributed by: Joseph Kirchmer/YourHub.com on 8/22/2008
The Adams 12 school district is cracking down on security this year with the launch of a new policy that requires students and teachers to wear identification cards on school grounds.
The new security standards, which apply only to high schools in the district, require all students and staff to wear a school-issued ID badge on their outermost garment at all times, according to Pat Hamilton, director of safe and secure environment at Adams 12.
“One of the biggest problems we face in high schools is that kids are mobile,” Hamilton said. “We want to make sure the kids that are on campus are supposed to be there. We felt like this (the ID requirements) would be an advantage for us.”
Several schools in the state already require students to wear lanyards, but this is believed to be the first ID requirement policy to be implemented on a district-wide level, Hamilton said.
“It’s a step up from what most schools require,” he said.
Staff members at each of the high schools will help enforce the new rules. Students who are caught not wearing their lanyards are subject to discipline, including suspension, he said.
The IDs will be required in the near future for middle school students as well. The district plans to make it mandatory for middle schools by the start of the 2011 school year.
School officials are confident the new security requirements will be a success, pointing to a pilot program launched two years ago in conjunction with the opening of Mountain Range High School in Westminster.
Julie Enger, principal at Mountain Range, admits the requirements were difficult to enforce at first and said some suspensions were necessary. But as students have grown more familiar with the additional security, so has compliance, she said.
“We’ve just remained consistent and it’s become a part of the culture,” Enger said. “Is it fail safe? No. But it’s at least one precaution we can take to know who belongs and who doesn’t. And each year we’ve improved on it.”
The school recently added a barcode to the ID, which gives students the ability to use it for other purposes such as a library card or bus pass. In addition, the back of the card displays the students’ schedule, making it easier for campus security to know if kids are cutting class, she said.
Though school officials tout the success of the program, some students feel the additional security is unnecessary.