Benefits of School ID Cards
Keep an eye on your budget and who’s walking your halls with faculty and student photo ID cards! A school ID card can help you:
- Visually identify students, staff and visitors at a glance
- Manage your lunch program
- Manage library and/or equipment checkout
- Keep track of attendance at school events, verify school bus access and more
Identify Students, Staff and Visitors at a Glance
There are countless techniques for adding visual verification and security to your school photo ID cards. A basic level of security can be incorporated into your cards within its design. Rather than a photo on a plain white background, use custom imagery or photographs on your cards.
To easily distinguish between students, faculty, and other staff, incorporate a color-coding system. For example, use a blue bar to indicate faculty, a green bar to indicate students, and a black bar to indicate administration. Additionally, design your visitor badges with an entirely different look so that visitor status is evident from a distance.
Your school ID cards are an extension of your school’s image and are often seen outside the walls of your school. An attractive, professionally designed card will convey the right message about your school, students and staff. Plus, a school ID card that is well-designed is more likely to be worn, helping you to ensure the effectiveness of your school ID program.
In order to create school ID cards in-house, you’ll need an ID card printer. Check out these tips on how to choose an ID card printer.
Use Your School ID to Manage Your Lunch Program & Library Check-Out
The push for efficient automated food service programs is creating demand for school ID cards that track account balance or store cash value. Today’s technology allows school IDs to be multi-purpose cards, such as serving as lunch cards. Scanning a barcode or swiping a magnetic stripe card means faster serving lines. Plus, barcodes or mag stripes allow schools to store student information such as class schedules, emergency contact information, medications or allergies, and even lunch account balances.
Many schools also need the ability to retrieve transaction data reports. For example, an automated lunch program allows you to compile and retrieve data for lunch planning or a parent’s inquiry into their child’s lunch account. Automating these functions, rather than compiling manually, saves your school labor costs.
There are a variety of cafeteria point-of-sale applications on the market, most of which use a card with either a barcode or magnetic stripe to connect the individual student to their account. Barcodes can store information such as a student’s lunch account number, which is debited on the back end when a lunch is purchased. A magnetic stripe can store value, just as a gift card does. In addition to lunch account management, a magnetic stripe can be used for entrance to school activities, vending machine purchases, and activities fee payments.
Using a dual-sided ID card printer allows you to print on the front and the back of your cards in one swift pass. Schools may print information on the back of cards such as allergies, contact names and phone numbers for efficiency in emergency situations. Learn more about single-sided vs. dual-sided ID card printers.
Get Your Multi-Purpose School ID Card Program Started!
Student, faculty, staff and visitor IDs can be produced onsite and on-demand using a photo ID card printer, with very little wait time. Students can have their photos taken and receive their printed school ID within minutes — without involving an outside vendor and the time and cost involved in dealing with one.
Using barcoded or magnetic stripe cards for your school’s food service program eliminates the need for manual counting and tracking. This automation also makes retrieving data simple since reports can be created almost instantly, potentially freeing up hours of staff time.
One of the keys to creating a safe school is controlling who’s in it. Using magnetic stripe, proximity card, or smart card technology, your school ID cards can control access to your building or even specific areas in your building. An access control system will allow you to control who enters your facility — not only during school hours, but at all times of the day such as when a teacher is alone in the building working late. Plus, an automated system provides records of exactly who is in your facility and when they’re in it.