BY CLARE MARIE CELANO
Staff Writer
SCOTT PILLING staff Erika Jimenez of the Park Avenue Elementary School, Freehold Borough, demonstrates the iris scanner. FREEHOLD — Some people have the password to gain entry through locked doors and some people do not. In this case the password is an iris recognition scan and the locked doors are the main entrances to all three Freehold Borough, Monmouth County, schools.
The K-8 district is taking part in a national research study to see whether iris recognition technology increases school safety.
The technology, equipment and training to use the iris recognition system are all part of a $369,000 grant received from the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), a research branch of the U.S. Department of Justice, according to Superintendent of Schools Philip J. Meara.
The concept involves a camera placed outside the front entrance to the school that takes a photo of a person’s iris, as well as a second iris scanner, a digital camera and a computer in the front office.
Meara said the grant is helping to pay to design a school security system using biometrics — a measurable physical characteristic or personal behavioral trait that is used to verify a person is who he says he is.
Parents, teachers or anyone else who at this time voluntarily registers for the iris scan will be allowed automatic access to the school after looking into the camera that is outside the building and having their iris read and recognized. To this point, more than 300 parents have registered and can use the iris scanner.
Visitors who are not registered must ring a doorbell and be escorted to the main office, where they will have to produce some form of accepted identification.
If the visitor offers a driver’s license as a form of identification, the software has the ability to place that information in the system’s data base and to retain it.
At one point during every visitor’s arrival at school, his or her photograph will be taken and transferred to a pass he or she will wear while in the building. This will apply to people who are and are not registered with the iris scan technology. The photographs that go on the “sticky pass” will become part of a permanent data base and could be used as a means of identifying a parent or relative if that became necessary in a school-related custody situation or a missing child case, Meara said.
This is the second such iris scan security system ever created for a school. Meara was also involved in the first system in the Plumsted School District when he was an assistant superintendent there.
“This is a second generation security system,” Meara said, explaining that a team of experts evaluated the Plumsted system and have added some improvements.
He said the Freehold Borough system has a “tailgating system.” If a registered person gets through the door and someone tries to follow behind him, an alarm will sound in the front office to alert school staff.
Meara said the Teacher-Parent Authorization Security System software was developed by Eyemetric Identity Systems with Hewlitt-Packard. He said iris imaging is a non-invasive form of identification and much more accurate than fingerprints.