Unit 5 students have a familiar but new rule this school year.

While students have had IDs for a while now, it is now required for them to wear their IDs somewhere on their bodies while in their school building.

At Normal West High School, safety is critical for the well-being of staff and students.

The “Plan to Scan” initiative is one of many safety precautions that West has recently decided to reinforce.

A visibly worn ID ensures that the staff or student is legally authorized to be at West’s location. 

“IDs are an easy way for someone who’s not in our building all the time to know that [there are] students in the building,” West’s principal and head of the initiative, Dr. Angie Codron, stated.

“Plan to Scan” will keep an automatic record of when students arrive and leave the building.

One hope is that it will help to reduce attendance errors and make it easier for the attendance office.

Keeping track of students’ safety is also very important, so scanning helps staff to be aware of who’s authorized to be in the building and who’s not.

With proper implementation, administration and staff will be aware of everyone’s surroundings.

Scanning is also way more easy than using daily sign-in sheets, which wastes paper and time.

Beyond these safety and convenience aspects, IDs have also been known to build trust.

In the event of a lockdown emergency, students who already possess their IDs are more likely to perform a smooth transition into actively evacuating the premises.  

“It could be a gas leak; it could be a fire; it could be some sort of other safety event that requires us to relocate. And so by having students wear [IDs], they’re readily available [on] and off or in and out of a site when we try to reunify, you know, students with families,”  Superintendent of Unit 5 schools Dr. Kristen Kendrick-Weikle stated. 

Because in these situations, reunification is the ultimate goal, the most helpful strategy in a moment like that would be to scan onto the provided buses and stay together by class.

By doing so, law enforcement or other administrators can easily identify any student with just their ID and send them off with their guardians.

Across the US, schools are updating and upgrading to protect the future generations from the growing dangers in schools.

Normal West is one of the many schools trying new things to make the school environment safer.

These scanners and IDs are not just in the building, though.

“The buses are [also] now equipped with scanners and so having those available seems appropriate if we’re asking students to scan on and off of a bus,” Codron, stated.

Schools are simply better equipped then before and adding a “Plan to Scan” is a familiar and easy task

that can provide a productive environment. 

According to Codron, difficult situations happen everyday, and they happen during school.  When this happens, “the difficult thing in a situation is identifying people.”

Schools, like Normal West are doing everything to make schools a safe place for students and applying the “Plan to Scan” initiative can make the environment as a whole safer and more productive.

“[IDs] support accountability during emergencies, allow for quicker access to school services (like meals, library checkout, and activities), and help staff and students build a culture of responsibility,” Unit 5’s Director of Safety and Security, Shane Hill, explained.

There are several reasons why wearing school IDs has a positive impact on West’s environment.

 “Adults coming into the building would have to scan and go through there, and it doesn’t do a quick background check to see if they are safe to be around kids.

“Scanning on and off buses allows administrators to be able to find students if, for some reason, they don’t get off at the right stop. It was kind of a safety piece for that,” Codron explained.

The challenge ahead is to get students, especially those at Normal West, to follow through with the plan.

“My principal brain goes to all the reasons that we should where an ID that I’ve listed. The student’s …objection is that the teenager brain goes to ‘this doesn’t go with my fit,’” Codron joked.

This mindset truly does make the process hard for the staff to enforce the new initiative to its full potential. 

Although West students have a lot of work to do, some students have already adapted to the rule.

 “It’s a convenient way for me to keep my ID on me at all times,” Natalie Graber, a senior at Normal

West, stated, while proudly sporting her Normal West ID.

While Dr. Codron and the rest of the administration conjures up ways to approve and enforce the “Plan to Scan” initiative, her eyes are still set on the future and how student IDs could be used, looking forward. 

For example, West is looking at the idea of getting electronic passes.

“With an electronic pass system, one of those things we talked about was if students did wear their IDs, that [we could have] a clip from a classroom with the room number or teacher name so that we would know where they’re coming from,” Codron explained.

According to Codron, electronic passes would assure that, in an emergency, if a student is in the hallway, a staff member would know where they came from so that they’re accounted for.

Ultimately, although the idea of IDs has been around for years, students at Normal West can plan on seeing a continued emphasis on their use.