News and Information

Two Leon schools to begin ID checks
Device will screen sexual offenders
By Aetna Smith, DEMOCRAT STAFF WRITER

Aug. 10, 2005 – Beginning next week, parents and other visitors at two Leon County schools will be screened to see if they are sexual offenders or predators.

Jackie Pons, the principal of Deerlake Middle School, said his school plans to try out the device during normal school hours. In October, he'll report back to the Leon County School Board, which may decide to use it countywide, said Leon County Superintendant Bill Montford.

"Principals have the responsibility to make sure sexual predators are not allowed access to the campus unless they're a guardian or parent," Pons said Tuesday. "But we've gone a step further."

Deerlake's Parent Teacher Organization voted to pay for the device this week, Pons said. The School of Arts and Sciences will use the same system this school year, said Assistant Principal Jane Wafford of the public charter school.

At these two schools, the identifications of visitors will be scanned for sexual-offense status in 42 states. If the person is an offender and a parent, they can still be on campus. But they'll have to escorted by a school official, Pons said.

"It's a way to find out quickly, instead of sitting at a desk, going on a Web site, typing up information and waiting," Wafford said, based on the sexual-predator policies schools follow. Currently, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement has a link that allows people to search for names and addresses of offenders and predators.

Robert Tricquet, the school resource officer at Deerlake, saw a presentation about the program at a conference this summer. The Web-based program is called V-soft, short for visitor, student or faculty tracking.

"If somebody is at school for some underhanded reason, they might not give you a correct name," he said. "So this takes the guesswork out of it. With (the software's) ability to scan the 42 states and the price of it, it was too good to pass up."

The software and scanner is about $1,500 for the first year. Afterward, technical support runs $432 annually, said Allan Measom, president of Raptor Technologies based in Houston. In Florida, about 45 schools in 10 counties have already purchased the program, he said. It's also being used in some schools in eight other states. The database is updated twice a month.

While some parents in the Deerlake Middle Parent Teacher Organization generally like the product, they worried about privacy and identity-theft issues, said Terry DiTanna, president of the PTO.

"With the contract between us and the company, they can't distribute the information, so that takes care of the identify-theft issues," she said. Measom said the data is encrypted to guard against hacking.

And as far as privacy issues are concerned, the sexual predator/offender databases in Florida and across the country are already public records, Measom said.

"FDLE has a link to sexual predators, and if you type in (Deerlake's) area code, there's 11 in the neighborhood," DiTanna said. "It just goes to show that they come from all walks of life. Bottom line, this is security for the children."

Montford said the software "appears to have tremendous merit and possibility." If the School Board decides to use it, it will pay for the program countywide, he said.

"We're looking to have some type of system in place," he said. "We'll critique this one and will be looking at others."

Contact reporter Aetna Smith at (850) 599-2382 or arsmith@tallahassee.com.