OUR VIEW : Not smart

Pea Ridge School Board makes questionable decision buying into Hall Pass

— In a climate like this, no one can blame the Pea Ridge School District for wanting to beef up its security.

This is, after all, the 21st century. Grandma can't get on an airplane without getting patted down first. Home-security systems are regularly advertised on television. And the University of Arkansas Police Department just acquired its own pair of German shepherds to comb for bombs before games at Reynolds Razorback Stadium.

You just can't be too cautious these days.

With that in mind, Pea Ridge implemented a new system this school year called Hall Pass, which is designed to protect students from sexual predators.

Under this system, every visitor presents a driver's license, which is scanned and checked against the national Sex Offender Registry. If determined not to be a sex offender, the visitor is granted a printed name badge granting him access to the school facilities. If the visitor's name shows up on the registry, then he might be escorted through the building, or denied access altogether.

The system cost Pea Ridge $1,500 per building, plus $40 per month, for four buildings.

Sounds all well and good, but here's our concern: The person who sold Hall Pass to Pea Ridge was Jason Van Dyke, who works for the firm that markets Hall Pass. Van Dyke is the son of Mike Van Dyke, superintendent of the Pea Ridge School District.

Does that seem like a conflict of interest to anyone? It does to us from a mile away. Yet the PeaRidge School Board approved the transaction Sept. 14 without blinking an eye. It's stunning, really, and it makes us wonder whether the board is anything more than a rubber stamp for the superintendent.

Perhaps there was nothing illegal about the deal, but here's the problem: It breeds the perception among taxpayers that they are paying for this system only because the salesman was the superintendent's son. And as the saying goes, perception is reality. A negative perception can quickly erode whatever trust a community might have in its school board.

It's not as if Hall Pass is widely used. In fact, the system was just introduced, and Pea Ridge is one of the first public-school districts in the country to implement it. How do we know that Hall Pass is effective?

Also troubling is the notion that Hall Pass might have been sold as something it is not. Jason Van Dyke said Hall Pass can pull information from the Arkansas Crime Information Center for information about a person - a tidbit passed along to parents by Mike Van Dyke earlier this month.

But Richard Faucett, an operations agent for ACIC, told The Times of Northeast Benton County, "That's sort of impossible." Only law enforcement has access to ACIC, he said.

Hall Pass might make Pea Ridge schools safer, but we can't help wondering whether this deal was made more in the interest of the Van Dyke family than in the students' safety.

News, Pages 6 on 09/30/2009

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