From 1999 to 2009, reported incidents of school-related crimes decreased significantly in the U.S. The percentage of students impacted by theft fell from 5.7 to 2.8, while the percentage of those who were victims of violent crimes fell from 2.3 to 1.4. Tragically, homicide was the second leading cause of death among those ages 5 to 18 during the years 1992 through 2010, but less than 2 percent of those homicides occurred at or on the way to and from school. Given the relative time devoted to school by those of this age group, this is a remarkably low percentage and testament that schools remain among the safest environments.
Nevertheless, when violent crimes do occur in schools, the results can be beyond horrifying, as recent news attests. Encouraging statistical trends are of little comfort at such times, and there is near universal agreement that “something” must be done to protect students. Fortunately, while society debates such polarizing school-safety issues as gun control, there are real-world, uncontroversial solutions to improving student safety, and Zebra Technologies has once again provided substantive, topical information, this time in the form of a white paper entitled Smart ID Cards for Education: Secure the Campus While Providing Essential Services.
The Zebra paper explores the various benefits of smart school-access cards – specifically those featuring embedded high-frequency RFID technology – as single-system solutions to a number of safety- and access-related challenges. These include:
- Management of Student, Staff and Visitor Access: Strict enforcement of visitor-admission screening is enhanced by issuance of smart photo-ID cards. Zebra’s print-on-demand smart-card systems can reduce the cost of encoding application-specific, custom-tailored photo IDs to pennies per visitor.
- Control Access to Secure Buildings or Rooms: Smart cards facilitate strict control of “who has access to what, where and when.”
- Capture of Student Time and Attendance Data: Smart cards can automate capturing and recording time and attendance data, freeing administrators and instructors from that time-consuming, repetitive task.
- Management of Library Access and Inventory: Smart cards can facilitate admission to libraries and related services, as well as automation of book check-out and tracking.
- Facilitation of Payment for On-Campus Services: Smart student-ID cards can be loaded and reloaded with credits for meals and other on campus services.
- Coordination with Off-Campus Affiliate Programs: Smart ID cards can be used to effortlessly confirm faculty and student eligibility for discounts and other incentives from off-campus affiliates.
Zebra smart-card solutions allow school administrators to solve a host of access-related challenges with the deployment of a single, comprehensive solution, while increasing both the safety and quality of education.
References:
Zebra Technologies: Smart ID Cards for Education: Secure the Campus While Providing Essential Services
http://www.zebra.com/content/dam/zebra/white-papers/en-us/smart-id-education-en-us.pdf
National Center for Education Statistics: Fast Facts
http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=49
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: School-Associated Violent Death Study
http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/youthviolence/schoolviolence/SAVD.html