Va. Preschool's Security Is More Than Skin-Deep

When photographer Nancy Ostertag went back to work in April after giving birth to a son, she enrolled him at Lola's Place, a private preschool tucked among the wide lanes and neat lawns of Sterling.

Never mind that Ostertag lives in Rockville and works in Bethesda, requiring a nearly two-hour commute each morning and evening. Lola's Place, she said, was worth fighting traffic for. Its child-care philosophy matches Ostertag's. Its building is airy, light and clean. And its security system? One of a kind.

"I love the idea that you can't get in there," Ostertag said. "You really can't get in there."

The doors are guarded by a vascular recognition system -- a machine that uses infrared light to read a hand's veins, 4 millimeters beneath the skin. Like fingerprints, vein patterns are unique, and the computer installed at Lola's Place will unlock the doors only for individuals it recognizes. Strangers must be buzzed inside by a staff member.

It's a technology that was developed to protect Asian financial centers, said Ayal Vogel, a vice president for sales at Tampa-based Identica, the manufacturer. Today, vein readers secure nuclear facilities, ports, power plants and sensitive data at universities. They keep people from bilking their workout gyms by sharing membership cards. And in a post-Sept. 11 world, where "people are looking for more security," Vogel said, K-12 schools -- especially private schools -- might be the next market.

"They have more money than the public schools at this point," he said, "and they have to compete against each other for students."

Vogel recently returned from Israel, where he gave his sales pitch to officials at a school in Jerusalem. He said Identica is planning to approach schools in major U.S. cities, including Los Angeles, New York and the District.

At Lola's Place, Identica's first preschool client, the technology has been "a huge selling point," logistics director Faith Smith said.

"We have parents here who like other schools, but the security system -- that was the deciding feature for them," said Kari McLeod, the school's director, who said she believes that Lola's Place is the first school in the region to offer vein-reading technology at its front doors.

Bruce Schneier, who writes often about security issues and is chief security technology officer at BT, a British telecommunications company, said this sort of convenience accustoms children to surveillance. "We've become acclimatized to a lot of security measures that make no sense, that are woven into the fabric of our day," he said.

"It doesn't solve a problem that exists. If you start running the math, schools are the safest place for kids," he said. "But when you think about fear, you don't do the math. Fear is about stories. You're playing to perception here."

Virginia law does not require preschool doors to be locked, said James Parcelli of the state's Department of Social Services, which regulates and licenses day-care centers. Although some preschools in the region use swipe cards or keypads with PIN codes to secure their doors, Lola's Place wanted to go one step further when it opened in February 2008, McLeod said, because "someone can look over your shoulder and read your PIN."

Lola's Place is part of a family of six Montessori schools in Northern Virginia. It caters to children between 8 weeks and 5 years old, and the cost depends on the child's age, from $1,850 a month for full-time infant care to $1,450 a month for older toddlers. It has a capacity of 80 students; currently, 24 are enrolled.

"It's pretty much the Cadillac of day care," said Jessica Williams, a freelance consultant whose 2-year-old and 3-month-old attend Lola's Place.

Initially, the school employed a fingerprint reader, a technology used by another preschool, BeanTree Learning, which has campuses in Ashburn and Chantilly. But that didn't work reliably for parents with illegible prints or dirty hands. The vascular recognition system was installed about a year ago.

Once inside the door, parents still use a fingerprint reader to automatically check their child into the building. Touch-screen monitors in each classroom show arrivals and allow teachers to record children's daily activities, including feeding, napping and toileting. When parents pick up their children, they check out with their fingerprint and receive a printed copy of the daily log.

The cost for developing and installing the entire security-and-tracking package was $65,000, according to logistics director Faith Smith. The vein reader alone retails for $3,400.

Daniel Gardner, a columnist at the Ottawa Citizen and author of "The Science of Fear," a 2008 book that examines why people underestimate certain risks and overestimate others, said the very presence of a security system can ratchet up parents' anxiety.

"If you go to the school's front door and there is a big, expensive security measure there, whether a uniformed guard or this technology," he said, "implicit in this security is a message that there is a significant threat to your children here."

"It's probably overkill," agreed Williams, the Lola's Place parent of two, "but in the very rare case that somebody was trying to get into the facility to harm any of the children, you're definitely glad that it is there."

At Lola's Place, the most significant threat so far has been gaggles of tennis players who wander over from nearby courts looking for a restroom, McLeod said. "Children are not in any more danger than they were 30 years ago," she said, "but everyone feels like they are."

When a seventh campus opens in Aldie in September, it will be secured by vascular recognition technology. If it runs smoothly with that site's higher volume of traffic, Smith said, the other campuses will be retrofitted.

Ostertag, a single mother who said she struggles to pay monthly bills, is moving to Sterling in mid-August to be closer to Lola's Place and cut her daily commute. She said she doesn't worry, necessarily, that her son will be snatched by a stranger. "It's more the feeling it gives me: that the school overall is making an effort to be secure," she said. "It's not a side plot -- it's a major thing."