Minneapolis Students to Wear ID Badges

NEW HOPE, Minn. — Students of all grade levels in the Robbinsdale School District will be required to wear identification badges starting this fall in a move to increase school security.

School board members approved the policy this summer, following increasing incidents of theft, fighting and outside intruders at district schools.

Two schools in particular, Robbinsdale Cooper High School in New Hope and Robbinsdale Armstrong High School in Plymouth, have struggled in recent years with students who do not belong on campus. Armstrong, a more than 2,500-student school, serves as a transfer bus site for the district. Students come from different schools to take buses to special programs, including the district’s English language program, making it difficult for teachers and staff to know who is enrolled at the school full time.

District officials hope the ID badges will reduce the number of unidentified persons on district campuses, including students from other schools and adults, and lessen the threat of on-campus crimes.

The badges are intended to not only alert school officials if an outside intruder is on campus, but also make an intruder feel exposed. Anyone spotted without an ID may be stopped by school employees once they enter school property.

Robbinsdale employees are already required to wear ID, and all visitors to district schools must check in with a school’s main office to verify their identity.

Although students at district middle schools have been wearing ID badges for several years, and high school students already use IDs to take out library books and participate in after-hours school events, Robbinsdale will be one of the few districts in the west-metro area of Minneapolis to institute a regular ID policy. With the exception of Minneapolis School District , no other neighboring school systems, including Eden Prairie, Hopkins, Osseo and Wayzata school districts, require visible student IDs.

Critics of the policy claim there is not enough research to indicate ID badges will dissuade potential intruders or mitigate disturbances. School districts not in favor of the plan state it could put undue strain on administrative staff if a high volume of students forget or lose their badges and come to the main office to be verified.

Robbinsdale plans to ease students into the new program and will issue new or replacement badges to those without IDs this fall. No guidelines have been established for students who lose or forget to wear badges.