With the 2017-18 school year underway, guests and visitors to all Virginia Beach schools are reminded of the check-in procedures that were put into place last year.

Upon entering a building, each visitor will now be asked to present a valid state or military ID to be scanned at the security desk. The division’s web-based visitor management system only scans the visitor’s name, date of birth and photo for comparison with a national database of registered sex offenders. No other data from the ID is gathered or accessible to any user. The entire process will take about 30 seconds to complete and allows the school to electronically check-in visitors and print more detailed visitor badges. At the conclusion of a visit, the badge is returned and the guest is checked-out.

If a visitor does not have an ID available at the time of his visit or there is a problem scanning the ID, he may be manually entered into the system and escorted to a specific destination within the school. In the interest of security and efficiency, this exception may only be made once for each visitor. In the beginning of the school year, there may be brief delays in the sign-in process as visitors grow accustomed to showing an ID.

To read more about the new sign-in procedures, visit the school division website, www.vbschools.com and click on “Visitor Sign-in” under the “Community” tab.