News and Information

Sex-offender screening begins for visitors to Eanes schools;
Identification will be checked against lists in 42 states
By Matthew Obernauer, AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF

Wednesday, October 26, 2005 – Pretty soon, a signature and a smile won't get you past a school's front desk. School security is going high tech, relying less on a visitor's word of honor about identity and intentions and more on public computer databases of known convicts.

The Eanes school district has joined dozens of districts across the state, and more than 100 across the country, in vetting nonstudent visitors electron- ically.

Beginning this week, visitors to Westlake High School and Eanes Elementary School will have their identifications screened against public databases of registered sex offenders in 42 states, including Texas, using the Raptor software system. The district has ordered Raptor systems for its other seven schools and hopes to have them operating by the end of the semester.

"This system will be a valuable resource for us," Eanes Superintendent Nola Wellman said. "Although our parents and visitors will need to get in the habit of producing (identification), it will be a more efficient and security-sensitive method of assigning guest badges."

Formed in 2002, Raptor Technologies Inc. reports that in Texas, 73 percent of sex offenders flagged by its software have committed crimes against children. According to the Houston- based firm, most of those flagged were parents or guardians of students attending the schools they were visiting.

Eanes is one of more than 100 school districts around the country that Raptor Technologies lists as users of its software, including several throughout Central Texas.

Officials at Marble Falls, which began using Raptor software last year, are pleased with the product. Barbara Edwards, a receptionist who operates the system at Marble Falls High School, said that the school had a match to a sex offender list three days after it began operating the program.

"It was a vendor who had been coming on campus for quite awhile, and he was a registered sex offender," Edwards said.

Edwards said in the year since, there have been no matches. Because of a false positive, in which one man shared the same name and a similar birthdate with a registered sex offender, a man was stopped at the door. However, the situation was cleared up easily, she said, when the computer brought up the offender's photograph. The visitor was a white man; the offender was black.

The Round Rock school district installed the software at McNeil High School this year, but the district's safety officer, Michelle Faust, said the school has not used it long enough to decide if it will be used in the long term. The Austin district is using the equipment on a free trial basis in one of its schools.

Eanes conducted a safety assessment last spring and concluded that security at the visitor's desk needed to be tightened and that district faculty and staff needed to be more diligent about wearing proper picture identification.

Officials said that while they don't think sex offenders are roaming their campuses -- a quick check of Texas public records shows only four sex offenders are registered in the 78746 and 78733 ZIP codes -- until now they could not be sure of who was coming into the schools.

"We have so many people going on our campus -- especially with our construction, we had so many contractors and we didn't know who they were," said Laura Santos-Ferry, Eanes' safety officer. "We have contractors, but then they subcontract some of their work, and it's hard to keep track of who is who."

The software, which costs $1,500 per school, will be paid for with a U.S. Department of Education homeland security grant. The annual maintenance fee, $432 per school, will be paid for by the Eanes parent and booster groups.

When visitors come to Eanes schools, they will be required to show a driver's license, which will be scanned. The Raptor software will check the visitor's name and date of birth against public databases of registered sex offenders.

If the name does not match anyone on those lists, the visitor will be given a pass showing his or her driver's license photograph and destination within the school.

Santos-Perry said the district is still developing procedures in case a search produces a match.

If the visitor is a parent, she said, the school cannot deny the person access to the child. However, officials can monitor the interaction and keep the offender away from other children.

If the visitor is from outside the school, such as a contractor, the school will call the visitor's supervisor and demand that he or she leave the campus. Previously, Eanes posted a sign-in sheet at the front desk of its schools and gave people generic visitor stickers.

"We always had a system where they sign in at visitor desk, but it doesn't tell you anything," Santos-Ferry said. "They could write anything. They could write 'Donald Duck.' "

The software also enables school officials to enter other information regarding students or regular visitors. Issues of court-ordered custody, for example, can be entered into the school's log, helping to keep a parent from picking up a child from school illegally. "A lot of it is changing the mind set," Santos-Ferry said. "Yes, nothing has happened at Eanes ISD, but it doesn't mean it couldn't happen."