The Aspen, Colo. School District is holding meetings to determine whether or not they want to implement a fingerprint-recognition system for students in lunch programs in their schools, according to an Aspen Times article. The district has already purchased the hardware and run a successful pilot test of the program.

The system will not be required of all students and school district officials expect most parents will not opt out of the program as it allows them to more efficiently track their child’s lunch account information. Even if a parent decides to opt out of the biometric system, however, the new program will still enable those parents to view their child’s purchases and replenish their accounts online.

Three meetings have been scheduled to educate parents on biometrics and the program specifics in hopes of assuaging privacy concerns that have been seen surrounding other such systems in other areas of the country. Further easing parents worries are the words of Michael Trader, president of the provider of the systems M2SYS, who says that rather than using fingerprint images, the systems utilize a few random points on the finger converted into binary data keeping any stolen data from being usable.

The school district is hopeful that the new system will both be well accepted by the community as well as ease lunch lines and worries about losing payment cards.

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