News and Information

Area district scanning for sex offenders
By Matt Frazier, Star-Telegram Staff Writer

Aug. 30, 2005 – SAGINAW - Any registered sex offender trying to enter High Country Elementary School can conceal their criminal past from school administrative assistant Jodie Hickman -- for about 60 seconds.

Then, if they've been arrested for any crime from indecent exposure to sexual assault of a child, she knows.

"I don't know what the exact charge is, but I know we want to be careful about letting them near our children," Hickman said.

The Eagle Mountain-Saginaw school district is the first in the area to use a computer software system that compares a visitor's driver's license to sex offender information from 42 states.

Already used in about 900 schools in 89 school districts across the nation -- 57 in Texas -- the 2-year-old V-soft program is gathering praise from teachers and parents.

Vocal opponents are hard to find, especially in Eagle Mountain-Saginaw, where the system is being used in four elementary schools, three middle schools and one alternative learning center.

"It may take a little longer to sign in, but it's worth it for the kids," said Sarah Scheneman, whose granddaughter attends High Country Elementary. "Unfortunately, schools need to have the best possible safety measures. I feel more secure knowing they have this."

High Country Elementary had strict security measures in place even before V-soft.

Only the front door opened from the outside. Visitors had to sign in and wear an identification name tag. Teachers and students were trained to be on the lookout for strangers.

But two registered sex offenders live within walking distance of High Country, and dozens more could drive from their homes to the Saginaw school in minutes. And someone could always give a false name on the school's sign-in sheet.

V-soft stops that.

It reads the driver's license, sending the photo and identification number to Raptor Technologies in Houston. The information is compared with information in a database of sex offender records from 42 states. The system automatically sends an alert to the administrator, the principal and the campus police if a match is made.

Those passing the check receive a name tag that includes their driver's license photo and their date and time of entrance onto the campus. It also can keep track of students who are tardy.

The service costs about $432 per campus per year, said Steve Williams, assistant superintendent of Eagle Mountain-Saginaw.

"This just raises the bar regarding safety," he said. "We would like to expand it to the remaining campuses."

Houston native Allan Measom co-developed the program to keep better track of people who were visiting Enron.

After that company's bankruptcy, he and his business partner, Justin Waldrip, worked for more than a year to develop a system to better identify people going into public schools.

Raptor began installing its first systems in February 2003.

The Pearland school district, near Houston, was one of the first to use the new software.

"On more than one occasion, Raptor has alerted us to individuals who might have compromised the security of our students and staff," said Bonny Cain, Pearland superintendent. "Raptor is a reliable screening tool that allows our school administrators to concentrate on educating children."

Since then, the company's office and staff have expanded, and sales are expected to be well over $1 million.

The technology has few opponents, although one or two parents in other states have complained that the checks are intrusive or that they fear identify theft.

The company does not sell scanned information, said Carol Measom, Raptor's marketing director.

More than 2 million people have been scanned by the system.

"We can't say how many alerts we've had. But we get an alert just about every single day, sometimes more than that," Measom said.

The company recently compiled statistics on alerts at Texas schools. It found that 73 percent of all sex offenders had convictions of sexual crimes against children. The average age of their victims was 11.

Most of these were parents or guardians with children at school, and many of them visit schools on a regular basis. The school can't stop a parent from seeing a child, High Country Principal Karen Sutton said. But it can limit their access to other students.

So far that's not been a problem at High Country. No one has triggered an alert. But they're glad to be ready, just in case.

"If we have the technology, we have to use it," Sutton said. "We owe it to our students and staff to keep them safe."
Matt Frazier, (817) 390-7957 mfrazier@star-telegram.com