The Stockton Unified School District will add extra security to deter registered sex offenders from getting access to any of the district’s campuses.
The SUSD Board of Trustees voted unanimously on Tuesday to approve the purchase of the Hall Pass Visitor Management System for use at the schools. The measure sailed through without discussion.
Superintendent Michelle Rodriguez praised the decision, which comes at a cost to the district of $94,682. A date has yet to be set to implement the new system.
“Safety is a priority at SUSD. This is another step in providing safety and a quality education,” Rodriguez said.
Hall Pass Visitor Management System is designed to protect students and staff from the risk of unwanted visitors on campus by instantly comparing school visitor identification data against an integrated and comprehensive database of sex offender registries throughout the United States. When a known sex offender is detected, Hall Pass sends instantaneous alerts preventing access for these predators to campuses and other school events.
When entering a Hall Pass guarded facility, every visitor must present a government-issued ID to the front office. The ID is scanned using the Hall Pass optical scanner and the information is checked against the National Sex Offender Registry and the District Visitor Restricted list. If the visitor is found on either list, the system will display a pop-up of the offender with a photo and send out alerts via text message and email to the appropriate staff and district police officers
Marcus Omlin, SUSD’s director of emergency service/school safety, crafted the safety proposal. Trustee Melinda Mendez made the motion to approve the measure. It was seconded by Ray Zueleta before the unanimous vote.
“The Visitor Management System protects students from leaving with an unauthorized individual, tracks who’s in the building and ran against the National Sex Offender Registry,” Omlin said.
Unbound Stockton denied again
The board unanimously voted to deny a petition to establish the Unbound Stockton Community School, marking Unbound Stockton’s second failed attempt for approval. Its first petition a year ago was denied due to several concerns including enrollment projections, financial reserves and data on operating expenses, and failure to substantiate facilities costs in the proposed budget.
District staff recommended the most recent denial based on the following findings:
· Unbound (the petitioners) are demonstrably unlikely to successfully implement the program set forth in the Petition.
· The petitioners do not provide reasonably comprehensive descriptions of the required elements set forth in the education code section.
· The charter school is demonstrably unlikely to serve the interests of the entire community where the school would be located.
The next regular SUSD trustees meeting is scheduled for Sept. 9.
Cool. Lincoln Unified did this 2 years ago. Way to lead from behind, but you have a good PR person.
Great. What about those people, sexual predators or not, who just climb one of the easy-to-scale fences surrounding the vast campuses and choose to make a mess of things? This management system weeds out the “bad” good ones, but what about the “bad” bad ones that just walk through open doors, climb, fences, or wait just outside of the school grounds? How will this management system protect our children at that point?