Riverhead High School is looking to better track students’ attendance by installing four kiosks within the building.
The district would use the attendance kiosks to monitor late attendance, cafeteria entry and open campus privileges, high school principal Charles Regan said at Tuesday’s Board of Education meeting.
The kiosks were created by ScholarChip, a Long Island-based company that provides smart card IDs for K-12 schools as well as payment gateway and electronic signature solutions for the higher education community, according to its website.
Each student would receive a Smart ID Card, which would be used to track his or her attendance.
When monitoring late entry, a student would then tap his or her card on the kiosk screen, which would record the time in and time out. The kiosk would also print a pass for the student.
Students’ schedule information would be uploaded to the Smart ID Cards, so if someone tried to enter the cafeteria during a time that isn’t that person’s scheduled lunch hour the kiosk would light up red, alerting nearby lunch monitors. The same thing would occur when checking out for open campus privileges, Mr. Regan said, adding that when a student is clocking out at the correct time the kiosk lights up green.
He added that having the kiosks on campus brings the added benefit of accounting for students in ways the district couldn’t before. Should an emergency situation occur, the district would have access to which students are off site and which are in the cafeteria, something currently not easy to determine.
The kiosks, which cost $2,500, are expected to be purchased using a $350,000 grant from the New York State Education Department. No kiosks have been purchased yet.
Phillips Avenue Elementary School is also looking to expand its walk-in freezer, board member Byron Perez said.
He said that during March 2017, Phillips served 17,999 reimbursable meals while the high school served 13,677, adding that Phillips Avenue has the busiest cafeteria out of all seven schools in the district.
“The current freezer space is inadequate for Phillips,” Mr. Perez said, adding that the district hopes to use leftover money in the school lunch fund to finance it, among other improvements to the lunch program, which is self-sustaining.
File photo: Riverhead High School. (Credit: Barbaraellen Koch)
