A Minnesota school district uses ID badges for employees and students alike.

With more than 600 staff members, the Spring Lake Park School District serves more than 5,100 students and their families from Blaine, Spring Lake Park and Fridley – three suburbs just north of Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minn.

Each year, the school district defines a Strategic Operations Plan, which outlines initiatives such as areas of improvement and effective operations. Part of this plan includes ensuring a safe and secure environment to effectively identify staff, parents, students and visitors when they are in the schools within the district.

To help identify these individuals, the school district issues identification badges. This includes issuing ID badges that staff are required to wear while they are working or in the building. Students also are issued a badge, which they are required to keep with them. The student badges are primarily used for admission to activities and events, and also include bar codes so they can be scanned in media centers for signing out materials and technology. In addition, after visitors sign in at a central welcoming/security location in the building, they are issued a security badge for their visit.

Datacard Group worked closely with IdentiSys Inc., an Enterprise Solutions Provider for Datacard Group, to provide a solution that updated the security on all badges issued to staff and students in the high schools and middle schools, as well as to visitors.

The solution included Datacard ID Works identification software and CD800 card printers at three badge printing centers located in the high school, District Service Center and Learning Alternatives Community Center.

Since the implementation, the school district has been very pleased with the quality of printing and ease of integration of the Datacard solution. Ultimately, the program has helped increase awareness and security in their buildings, as well as enhance the colors on their cards, speed of issuance and ease of operations needed to issue the cards.