Hopkins Elementary School Fingerprinting Children For Lunch Service

An elementary school in Hopkins, Michigan is starting a unique process for their food service for students. Children are now being fingerprinted for the service used at lunchtime, which is drawing a lot of criticism and confusion amongst residents in and around the area.

The first thing to point out is that prior to the school year parents were informed that the service would be used and that the children’s fingerprints would not be public knowledge and would be stored within the school, as one woman pointed out:

It's just like opening your phone with your thumbprint. They're not actually getting fingerprinted like people going to jail do lol . It's only for the food service area so kids that forget their lunch number and stuff like that don't have to worry about having a track it down to get lunch.

This sparked some concern from parents and people in the community, that regardless of what the school may want to do with the fingerprints and info, there will always be a danger of keeping that information stored:

Anyone who doesn’t know this is shared data - needs rethink about their child’s finger print being stored on a public government data base.

Personally, the school handled the situation correctly, informing parents prior to the school year that this new service, which will allow for easier access to lunches was going to be made available, and should have come as a surprise to no parents.

This may be a case of generic community outrage over the changing times, but as with the unreliability of all technology, their concern is just.