Duval County Superintendent Nikolai Vitti asked the school board Tuesday to consider a new student identification card system.
It would allow the district to track students throughout the day.
Currently it’s up to each school to purchase its own IDs and the information being tracked is typically limited to tardiness. Under Vitti’s proposal, all IDs would be purchased under a district contract, resulting in a cost savings of about $1 million over five years. Schools that already purchase IDs are spending about half a million dollars a year.
Also, while some schools already use IDs to track student activity, that data isn’t relayed to the district. Viti’s proposal includes a central database.
The first year of implementation would cost the district about $1 million. But Vitti said the district should be able to leverage for better prices, bringing yearly costs down from $500,000 to $123,000.
Under the new plan, students will have their ID scanned at the start of each class throughout the day, including at lunch, extracurricular activities and on the bus.
Parents will be notified when their kids check in on the bus or if the bus is running late.
Vitti said tracking bus ridership could help the district save money by cutting or merging routes. It will also indicate when buses are full, and allow bus drivers to notify schools about students who are having behavior issues.
The board can continue to discuss the plan or vote to adopt it at a later date.
Lindsey Kilbride can be reached at lkilbride@wjct.org, 904-358-6359 or on Twitter at @lindskilbride.
