Dubuque kids may use finger for lunch

Students in Dubuque schools may soon be showing a finger to get their lunch. School officials are considering a new system that would record the fingerprints of every student, and use that fingerprint rather than a lunch ticket as a pass into the lunchroom. Mike Wolfe is the food service manager for Dubuque Community Schools. Wolfe says students would be fingerprinted as kindergarteners, and that record could be used throughout their 13 year school career. Students often lose or misplace their lunch cards, holding up the line while lunch room officials search through computer records to find out if the student’s paid-up for lunch. Mary Ann Cornell, a lunch room monitor at Hoover Elementary in Dubuque, says getting in with a fingerprint might make the lunch line move more quickly. She says it’s probably not necessary, but it would be nice to make things move faster and easier. She hasn’t noticed any real problems with students forgetting their lunch cards, though. At the high school level, though, some students pass their tickets off to others. Some are bullied into giving up their tickets. Wolfe, the food service manager for Dubuque schools, says a fingerprint i-d system would be just another way to increase speed and provide accountability and security to the lunch program.