News and Information

Scan for safety
New system in San Benito tracks visitors through IDs
Monday, March 6, 2006, By AMY L. DAVILA

SAN BENITO - Living within a five block radius of Fred Booth Elementary are at least five registered sex offenders.

Knowing that people who have been charged with sexual assault of children as young as 6 are living not only near a school but children in general, is unsettling for Belen Limon, mother of two Fred Booth students.

However, she feels more at ease with just who is walking into her children's school with the San Benito school district's implementation of RaptorTrace, a program that scans a visitor's driver's license to check if they are a registered sex offender.

"I think it is a wonderful idea," Limon said. "It does make me a little more relieved to know that they are checking people who come into our schools."

RaptorTrace and V-soft, the software used for the program, aids in tracking visitors, students, faculty and volunteers and alerts school officials of sex offenders. Other features are designed to help share information between administrators and school law enforcement personnel.

"When a visitor comes, the person at the front desk in the office will ask for your driver's license and then it will be scanned for any red flags," Superintendent Antonio Limon said.

"It looks to see if the visitor or unknown parent is a sex offender, (have) any custody or restraining orders or if they have committed any crimes involving a child. It can also scan for student tardies and record them for later use."

After a visitor is scanned and cleared, a small printer dispenses a visitor's tag with the name and picture of the visitor that helps faculty identify those who have already been scanned in.

"Even without a driver's license it can still find an individual on the database," Fred Booth PIEMS coordinator and parent, Cindy Ramirez said. "We ask for their name and birth date and it can still be matched."

Although the district first became linked to the program last Monday, Fred Booth has had the scanning capabilities for three weeks, said Manuel Cruz, Fred Booth Elementary principal.

"Parents have been very cooperative and we have had a very positive response," he said. "We, as a campus, have embraced this with open arms since it was first brought for a demonstration for the district."

San Benito school board members approved the $27,000 investment after a formal demonstration of the services at a December board meeting and assurance that visitors will still retain their privacy.

"Some people were skeptical at first because they did not know what was going to come up on the screen," superintendent Limon said. "They thought it would invade people's privacy, but no other personal information, besides a red flag for the aforementioned offenses, will show up."

Cruz said that so far, neither he nor other administrators have been alerted to any offenders trying to register on a campus, but there is no such thing as extra security when it comes to children.

"When you hear stories like the one about a month ago where a man came and just took his children that he did not have custody of, you want to make sure that does not happen here," Cruz said. "The safety of the children is a top priority and this just makes things a little bit easier."

Article taken from Valley Morning Star on 03/06/06.