Following districts in Manatee and Sarasota, the Charlotte County School District will start checking all school visitors against a national sex offender database.

Over the next two months, the district will install the visitor identification programs at its 21 district schools and centers.

The " popular " V-Soft system, created by Houston's Raptor Technologies, scans a visitor's driver's license and checks the name and birth date against Raptor's national database of state sex offender registries.

"This is something we decided we could do " to keep kids safe"," said Steve Cummings, the district's security director.

The V-Soft software also allows the district to customize its database with local information, such as names included in restraining orders and trespass warnings.

Swanny note: This sounds like a very dangerous  precedent being set in place...letting the devil into information  while swearing it is to "keep kids safe"

For example, if a parent is forbidden from seeing his or her child, an alert will flash on a computer screen at the front desk. The alert will come up only if a parent or the police has informed the district of a court action and a note has been made in the system.

The screening system is not required under the Jessica Lunsford Act, which requires the district to run a background check on anyone who has a business relationship with the district, Cummings said.

The district will continue its Lunsford checks, which can take two forms depending on a worker's access to students.

Under a Level I check, a contract employee is charged $10 to be checked against Florida's sex offender list; under a Level II check, the person is charged $91 to have the full criminal background check that is run on all district employees. (Swanny note: What a Racket!)

The V-Soft units will vastly update the district's current visitor check-in system. 

Visitors now fill out a sign-in sheet and are issued a guest sticker. Front-desk workers operate under the assumption that visitors are telling the truth about who they are. "It (is) all based on local knowledge," Cummings said.

Swanny Note: Isn't this what living in a community ALL about?

The district has already purchased 10 V-Soft units, at a cost of $1,500 each,

for its elementary schools.

The district plans to make a second 13-unit purchase and have the systems operating in every school by the middle of October, Cummings said. The district will also pay a $400-a-year license fee for the 21 schools.

 Swanny note: Did any One VOTE on this?

In addition to the software, the V-Soft system includes a visitor-pass printer and a license scanner that will read a person's name and birth date from the license's magnetic strip.

At Wednesday's School Board workshop, Cummings demonstrated how the system works, using his own driver's license.

In a matter of seconds, Cummings scanned his license and had his information cleared against the database. The printer spit out a visitor's badge using his license photo.

If a visitor has no ID, the school will try to verify who the person is, but the district will encourage all visitors to bring a license or a state ID.

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