By Andy Sevilla

As classes resume this month and students bring in their techy holiday gifts, Hays CISD is rolling out a new protection to help keep electronics in the right hands.

The district has implemented Operation Identification, a registration portal that keeps Hays students’ portable electronics’ serial numbers in a database as an added layer to help identify lost or stolen items.

The registration is free of charge and is led by the campus crime stoppers program, officials said. The information is only registered with the campus School Resource Officer (SRO).

“This has been something in the works for a while in partnership with the Hays County Sheriff’s Office to help in making a report if a student’s or teacher’s personal devices are either lost or stolen, or found,” Tim Savoy, Hays CISD spokesperson said.

This school year, the district began a new initiative, Drive Your Own Device (DYOD), where students are allowed to use their portable tech devices, like smart phones and tablets, for learning purposes in the classroom.

All Hays CISD teachers also will receive an electronic tablet to facilitate teaching in the classroom. Those tablets will be purchased with bond funding from an approved package voters green-lighted in May. 

About $4.7 million of the approved $59 million bond also will be used to ramp up wireless connectivity and add wireless access points at district campuses. 

Now that the technology is encouraged on campuses, as part of the DYOD philosophy, and after the gift-giving holidays, officials say more students are likely to take portable devices to school. 

That’s where the new program comes in. Officials warn that electronic devices are attractive targets for thieves due to their high resale value, and Operation Identification facilitates registering those devices and getting lost or stolen goods back to their rightful owners.

“The timing is because after the holidays, a lot of students will have new devices they received for Christmas and the forms and processes are in place to start taking ID number registrations,” Savoy said.

The registration will need to be completed each school year, and one registration would need to be completed per technology device being registered. For example, if a student has a smart phone and a tablet, one registration would need to be completed for the smart phone and another for the tablet.

That registration in turn would be used to identify the registered owner of the device should a lost or stolen device be found.

And while officials say loss is more common than theft, students should remain alert and aware of their surroundings when using their device and never leave them unattended. 

Figures on how many electronic devices had been reported lost or stolen at Hays CISD campuses were not immediately available by press time.