ROME, Ga. - It takes more than a lunch lady to run today's public school cafeterias. It takes a logistics expert.
Take Rome's West End Elementary, where two classrooms of students charge into the lunchroom every five minutes, load their trays up with corn dogs, steak nuggets and fresh fruit and pile into cashier Lydia Galego's line.
Galego, though, has a new tool to help handle the rush. Each student stops at a computer in front of Galego and presses an index finger up to a reader before trotting off to a table. The student's names flash across Galego's monitor, and each of their prepaid accounts are automatically debited $1.10.
Colleges and high schools have used fingerprint scanners to stop non-students from sneaking into dining halls and gyms. Now elementary schools are joining in, hoping that biometric devices are a good way to keep lines moving and pay for meals.
Districts elsewhere in the country use finger scans to dispense medicine, take attendance, check out books in the library or ensure that bus-riding students get off at the right stop.
