Sherry Drake Silence, Memphis Commercial Appeal - 5/17/2009

Shelby County Schools has a new, high-tech way to identify and track campus visitors.

With a quick scan of a driver's license, school staff members now know if a visitor is on any sex-offender registry nationwide.

"The people who are coming in, we know exactly who they are," said Kim Lampkins, principal of Crosswind Elementary in Collierville.

Last year, Crosswind was one of three Shelby County pilot schools to use V-soft, the Web-based visitor management system by Houston-based Raptor Technologies, Inc.

Pleased with the results from the pilot, district security officials recently bought the equipment for all 51 schools in the system for about $71,000. They've been setting up the system in schools for the past few weeks.

Here's how it works: The front office assistant scans a visitor's license and views the ID information on a monitor. If the person's name matches a name of a sex offender, the offender's name, photo and birth date appear on the screen. The assistant tells the system if it's a true match.

If the person is a sex offender, a text message is sent to school and security staff who head to the office. If the offender is not a parent with a legitimate reason to be there, he or she will be arrested. Offenders visiting their children will be accompanied by a school administrator.

Those who aren't offenders are given a visitor tag with their names, photos and reasons and time of visits.

According to Raptor's Web site, in 2008, "V-soft identified and alerted officials to more than 1,100 sex offenders entering schools and other organizations where children were present."

So far, Shelby school officials have identified one sex offender who wasn't a parent and shouldn't have been on a campus. He was arrested, said Gary Gitchell, the district's director of security, who wouldn't identify the school.

"We're not wanting to persecute anyone; each sex offender case is different," Gitchell said. "We're worried about pedophiles and things of that nature."

Another benefit of the system is that it saves parent volunteer hours. They no longer have to dig through sign-in books to count the hours.

"It's awesome," said Crosswind Elementary parent Ginny Gwaltney, a school volunteer. "It's just one more level of security."

Arlington Middle principal Pat Prescott said she hasn't heard any complaints from parents.

"I need to know who's in my building," Prescott said. "And I really need to know what time they got there and where they're supposed to be. This little tag takes care of all of that."