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Raptor Technologies has acquired software company SchoolPass to expand its IoT solution for child dismissal with RFID, camera or QR code scanning.
Jun 14, 2023 Any parent knows the challenges around school dismissal times, including traffic, lines of students, and the need for personnel to confirm each child is being released to the appropriate guardian. How the release is handled varies from one school to another, but it is most often a manual task requiring paperwork and visual checks by employees. Recently, technology has been offering benefits to bring order and a digital record to this process, and radio frequency identification (RFID) is among the potential enablers.
School safety software firm Raptor Technologies, with its acquisition of technology company SchoolPass, is expanding its RFID solutions to include the management of dismissals and bus news. The company is offering districts and schools a way to manage student dismissal by automatically identifying approved vehicles that enter school lots or pick-up areas, and ensuring students are properly released to the drivers of those vehicles.
Since its founding in 2002, Raptor has provided software to 52,000 schools, enabling them to manage services related to student safety, according to David Rogers, Raptor’s chief marketing officer. That includes what it calls its Visitor Management Solution, used when each guest arrives. As visitors present their IDs, the software conducts scanning, a background check, confirmation of custodial rights and the release of visitor badges. It checks each user against sex offender lists, and it provides instant alerts about individuals that might be relevant to the school.
Raptor’s Volunteer Management Solution similarly checks the status of volunteers, then approves and stores data related to each individual’s arrival. The same system can be used when volunteers check out each day. The company’s Emergency Management Solution, meanwhile, enables the management of drills and can facilitate reporting and integration directly with 911. The latter can be used with identification technologies, such as RFID, if schools adopt such systems, to better track the locations of students and employees.
The software can provide reunification as part of the emergency management feature. Thus, if there is a safety incident at a school, the software can confirm the identity of the parent or guardian and approve the release of a specific child. It can also detect early issues with children. For instance, if a teacher, coach or bus driver observes a challenge related to a particular student’s behavior, they can use the app to report the situation. The software will then conduct a behavioral threat assessment to automatically recommend whether that student poses a threat to themselves or to others.
Managing Student Dismissals
SchoolPass, based in Maryland, offers similar features, including a visitor-management product that checks visitors entering the school, while also providing emergency management. “What they offered that Raptor did not was attendance and dismissal,” Rogers says. The solutions that SchoolPass has been selling include an attendance-checking system by with students can scan in using a physical card or digital ID. The system can also enable students to request and receive hall passes. SchoolPass offers an app with which parents or guardians can schedule doctor or dental appointments and pick up their children without having to make phone calls.
Rogers says the company has been providing solutions for managing attendance and dismissal, and that Raptor and SchoolPass have been in discussions for some time. “Their DNA is a great fit for our DNA,” he states. Raptor’s school and district customers had been asking about solutions that would improve the experience regarding car lines and bus riders at the end of each school day, to reduce the delays or confusion that often come with safely releasing hundreds of students to their guardians. Three versions of the school-dismissal feature are being employed with different kinds of technology.
One features cameras, another employs RFID and the least expensive option uses QR codes printed on stickers applied to parents’ vehicles, with a deluxe version that includes license plate recognition. Cameras mounted around a school’s pickup area or parking lot automatically capture every license plate, and the software thus identifies each vehicle. For student drivers, the system would read a license plate and link it to a specific authorized driver, such as a high school student, confirming they are leaving campus at an approved time (at the end of the school day, for example). If their departure is detected outside of that time, an alert can be issued to school authorities.
In addition, the technology would be used for student pickups. Each parent using their car to pick up their children would register their license plate number in the software via an app. The Raptor and SchoolPass system would then leverage the camera to scan the license plate and confirm they are an authorized driver. Teachers or school personnel charged with releasing students could view details regarding each car that arrives, using the school-facing app on their phone. They could then usher the appropriate child to that vehicle, allowing an orderly release for which there is a digital record.
Reducing Confusion, Delays and Paperwork
Since the license plate recognition technology is too costly for some districts, a less expensive version employs passive UHF RFID. Parents who require authorization to pick up their children throughout the school year need an RFID tag, which comes with a unique ID number encoded linked in the software to details about them, as well as about the students they will be picking up. Parents apply their tag, which comes in the form of a sticker, to the driver’s side headlight of their vehicle. When they approach the school to pick up their kids, a staff member assigned to that location uses a handheld RFID reader to interrogate tags as vehicles arrive.
The read distance could be about 15 meters (49.2 feet), so the device would not need to be extremely close to detect vehicle IDs. Once a tag has been read, the software identifies the driver and forwards that data to the app, which is accessible to the school staff who have custody of the child, similarly to the system that uses license plate identification. The worker thus knows which parent has arrived and can prepare the student for release.
A less expensive version of the solution provides no automated identification. Instead, a QR code is printed on the stickers that parents apply to their vehicles. When a parent arrives to pick up their child, a staff member scans the QR code to view that person’s identification before releasing the child. All three scenarios offer the potential to reduce confusion and delays during daily dismissals, Rogers reports, which means students can be released more quickly, traffic can be limited and parents have less wait time.
At the same time, the technology is intended to ensure that no children are released to unapproved individuals or vehicles. For instance, the software could flag specific vehicles or parents who are not authorized to pick up a given child, and employees could receive alerts ensuring they do not accidentally release a child to an unauthorized parent. The system is designed to eliminate the need for paperwork, signatures and two-way radios for teachers confirming the locations or releases of students.
The system creates a record, so a school knows which parent or guardian has been picking up each child, as well as when this occurs. Raptor Technologies is now in the process of integrating the SchoolPass dismissal technology into its existing software suite, so that it can offer the functionality to its existing and new customers, including schools already using the SchoolPass technology, which could now have access to Raptor’s other solutions as well.
Key Takeaways:
- The acquisition of SchoolPass enables Raptor Technologies to offer a school-safety solution that includes the management of dismissals via RFID, license plate recognition or QR codes.
- With its expanded product portfolio, Raptor intends to aid schools with the manual process of matching students with parents or guardians and releasing them accordingly.
