For casual visitors to the cafeteria, all seemed normal and unaltered when they joined the lunch line on the first day of school. But for frequent customers, there was one major change this year that greeted them at the register, resulting in fumbled coins and delayed lines.

This year, the D95’s business office made the decision to remove fingerprint scanning from the district entirely in light of a pending court case. 

“The decision was based on an Illinois Supreme Court’s decision in January, 2019 to allow a lawsuit regarding biometric scanning to proceed,” Chris Green, District 95 director of business services, said. “The lawsuit Rosenbach v. Six Flags involves an amusement park collecting a thumbscan from a 14 year old without parental consent.  While D95 did require families to grant consent or not grant consent for thumb scanning, it was determined that it would be in the best interest of the District to discontinue this practice.”

Due to the statewide impact of this decision, many Illinois school districts are also re-evaluating their practices in regard to bioscan (fingerprint) options. 

Since thumb scanning was a success, according to Green, because it made “ checking out in our lunchrooms fast, efficient, [and accurate]”, she says that there is a possibility the technology will return once legal issues have been cleared.