Parents in the central Ohio town of Circleville may not have to worry about lost or misspent lunch money any more.

This week Circleville schools are joining Akron, Huron, Rocky River and at least five other school districts in Ohio implementing new fingerprint technology, which allows students to pay for lunch with a touch. The cost of the meals is then deducted from prepaid accounts.

Schools who use the fingerprint software system, called biometrics technology, say swiping fingers increases speed in lunch lines and helps schools keep a more accurate count of how many students are served meals. Distributors of the software say the systems typically cost between $1,000 and $5,000 per cafeteria line register.

Critics have raised questions about the security and privacy of the technology.

Fingerprints are serious and should not be used for something as trivial as purchasing school lunches, said Carrie Davis, staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio. If prints are stored with a student's file _ which might contain grades, contact information and medical records _ any security breach could be dangerous for the children, Davis said.

"Fingerprinting students is another troubling sign of our surveillance society," she said.

The images scanned by the biometrics technology aren't technically fingerprints, said Mitch Johns, president of the Wilmington, N.C.-based Food Service Solutions, one of the firms that makes the technology. Fingerprints used by law enforcement officials identify 40 separate points of a print, but the commercial fingerprinting systems typically use just the tip of a finger and identify only 7 to 15 points of a print.

"There's no actual police-quality fingerprint stored," he said.

Schools have turned to the technology as part of a growing trend nationwide to get cash out of schools entirely, he said. Other systems allow students to pay for lunch using PIN numbers, their last names or with special prepaid credit cards.

Schools also are eager to maximize their students who receive free or reduced-price lunches, which bring federal and state aid into schools, he said. High school students who are eligible to receive federally subsidized lunches often do not enroll because of the stigma of carrying around a free lunch ticket. Paying through fingerprints is entirely private, he said.

The system is working extremely well in Akron, the first district in Ohio to embrace the technology, said Debra Foulk, coordinator of business support services for Akron schools.

The district first implemented the technology in 2003, and currently about 14,000 students in 17 schools use the system, she said.

Foulk said she chose a biometrics system because it was the safest, most secure technology she could find. Fingerprints cannot be lost, stolen, or exchanged between students. With biometrics, schools know for sure which children were served lunch.

Although some parents were reluctant to enroll their children at first, Foulk now estimates that 97 percent of eligible students use the system. Only two have opted out entirely because of parental concerns about privacy, Foulk said.

Students think the technology is "cool" and parents appreciate the ease of a cashless system, she said.