Diocese of Jefferson City school using fingerprint ID technology

In this 2010 file photo, a parochial student holds up his finger to look at its pattern while listening to a police officer's presentation to the class at his Jefferson City school. A fingerprint data technology in use at one Catholic school in Columbia within the Diocese of Jefferson City is not presently being used elsewhere, and the technology does not store or share students' fingerprints, according to the diocese.
In this 2010 file photo, a parochial student holds up his finger to look at its pattern while listening to a police officer's presentation to the class at his Jefferson City school. A fingerprint data technology in use at one Catholic school in Columbia within the Diocese of Jefferson City is not presently being used elsewhere, and the technology does not store or share students' fingerprints, according to the diocese.

A fingerprint data technology in use at one school in the Diocese of Jefferson City is not presently being used elsewhere, and the technology does not store or share students' fingerprints, according to the diocese.

The use of a fingerprint data feature at Our Lady of Lourdes Interparish School in Columbia and whether families there consented to the use of it raised concerns this week about the technology, according to media reports.

Helen Osman, Diocesan director of communications, said Wednesday the diocese is contracting with the FACTS company to implement a new School Information System, or SIS.

An SIS is school management and information software, Osman added in an email.

FACTS is based in Lincoln, Nebraska, and the company has affiliations including with Catholic, other Christian, Jewish and private school education associations.

"(FACTS is) one of the big providers of this SIS software for private schools in the country. This biometric piece on the lunch program is part of the services that they offer to us," Osman said.

She said Our Lady of Lourdes is replacing the physical ID cards students use at lunch with a fingerprint data system.

"The scanner reads like 10 points on your finger, and because each of us have a unique fingerprint, those 10 points then translate into a unique identifier code, like a number. That's what we're storing, those 10 points. We're not physically putting a child's finger on an ink pad (and) getting a paper copy of it. It's not being shared with anyone outside of our system," Osman said.

She added via email the data points extracted from a fingerprint are stored as "a proprietary mathematical representation" of FACTS' - "a binary data file, a series of zeros and ones" that are matched to a student's account in the school's system.

Osman wrote the decision for Our Lady of Lourdes to move to the new system for lunch accounts made sense "because of their (large) size, the need to comply with federal guidelines for the free and reduced lunch program, and their desire to provide enhanced security of their students' information."

She said the difficulties with physical ID cards are that students, especially younger ones, lose the cards, and the personal information on the cards' face - name, photo - is not very secure.

"This is definitely a better way of protecting children's identity than what we've had available to us in the past," Osman said of the new technology.

"They are top-of-the-line certified in today's security standards," she added of FACTS. "That's why we went with them."

FACTS' services include: school tuition management; payment administration and processing; financial needs assessment; and online admissions and enrollment solutions, in addition to student information systems, according to its website.

FACTS is a Nelnet company. Nelnet is a financial services company, also based in Lincoln, Nebraska, that has other business interests including in-school consulting; grant and scholarship management; credit life insurance; campus cybersecurity; school foundation services; and student loan servicing - management of its student loan portfolio being the source of "a substantial portion" of Nelnet's earnings, according to its website.

Osman said, in addition to being more secure, students at Our Lady of Lourdes will also get their lunches quicker and have more time to eat with the new system.

She said families were informed the school was moving to the new system, and "they were given the opportunity to opt out." She did not have an exact timeline of that, but said 11 Our Lady of Lourdes families had chosen to opt out and continue to use physical ID cards for their children.

Osman said about half of the schools in the diocese are moving into the new FACTS system - though "all of (the schools in the diocese) have some kind of school information system."

The diocese has 40 Catholic schools - 37 elementary schools and three high schools.

While "no other school's using this biometric feature at this point" beyond Our Lady of Lourdes, Osman added, "there will probably be other schools doing this," on a school-by-school decision basis that's "all about what works best for their students and their faculty."