Mission school district to screen visitors for sex offenses

MISSION - The Mission school district will become the third district in Hidalgo County to implement a computerized system designed to keep sex offenders off campus.

School board members voted last week to spend $32,000 on V-Soft, a software program that scans school visitors' identification and checks it against a database of sex offenders and other unwanted guests.

Parents, vendors and other visitors will be required to undergo screening before wandering the halls of any school in the district starting in the fall.

The McAllen and La Joya school districts already use the same system, which scans IDs and sends text message alerts to principals and others when sex offenders or people on a "no fly" list try to enter a building.

Administrators, in recommending V-Soft, admitted that the most determined predators or kidnappers are unlikely to meekly present an ID at the front door. But the system will give administrators more tools to control who comes to campus and why.

Currently, campuses require visitors to sign in and receive a visitor's badge.

The system will pull names and birth dates from a state-maintained database of registered sex offenders. Administrators can then add names to a district-specific database to alert them when people come calling who are under restraining orders or are barred by custody arrangements from seeing their children.

The software company, Houston-based Raptor Technologies Inc., claims V-soft identified more than 1,100 sex offenders entering schools "and other organizations where children were present" in 2008. The system allows receptionists to compare a photo from the sex offender database with the visitor to avoid false identifications.

Texas Senate Bill 9, passed in 2007, gave specific permission to schools to screen visitors for sex offender status. Before that, the McAllen school district was already using the system at all its campuses, said Greg Goedeke, vice president of sales and operations at Raptor Technologies.

Two other companies making similar software products submitted more expensive bids to the district.