BROWARD, Fla. – A federal database of sexual offenders and other people with court records will be linked to a system at Broward public schools and will scan the driver’s license or other picture ID of any person attempting to access the campuses.
The $2.1 million Security Tracking and Response (STAR) system comes in response to the Jessica Lunsford Act, a measure to keep sexual offenders out of schools, that passed this year.
The system, already tested in 15 schools last year, keeps a record of those not allowed on campus and pulls up a picture of the person along with his or her name. It has been installed in most of the district’s schools so far with more expected to be ready to go over the next year.
Nine-year-old Jessica Lunsford was kidnapped, raped and killed in 2005 by a convicted sex-offender who worked as a day laborer at her school.