This week, the Mars School District launched a new security system that will require adults visiting all buildings within the district to show identification that would be checked against a sex offender database. We think this is a great idea.

Under the Raptor Visitor Management System, individuals entering all of the district’s school buildings would be required to provide a driver’s license or another form of identification that would be scanned or entered into the system, which would then check the information against a national database of registered sex offenders.

Considering the dangers young people across the nation face each day by merely showing up for school, the Mars School District deserves praise for taking additional steps to keep classrooms safe. Butler County school districts have been undertaking a number of great initiatives recently to protect their students — for example, the South Butler School District’s consideration of bringing Rachel’s Challenge, which is named after the first student who was killed during the Columbine High School shooting in Colorado in 1999, to the district as well as that district’s plan to place metal detectors in all South Butler schools and approve funding for additional radios and handcuffs for school police officers.

These initiatives follow in the wake of a student being arrested after the discovery of a Snapchat video in which he was seen firing an AK-type weapon with the caption “Training for prom walk.”

Mars’ new security system — which will be paid for with safe school grants — provides the district with an enhanced method of screening visitors that is not overly inconvenient. According to the district, no other data is gathered from the scan and nothing is shared with any outside agency. And while visitors are given a printed badge that identifies them by name and photo, badges are not required for parents who are picking up or dropping off students or stopping in a school’s office to exchange paperwork. Previously, visitors had to sign in at the school’s office and were given a badge with their name on it. “The new Raptor system will increase the level of clearance each visitor will undergo before entering the building,” said Wesley Shipley, district superintendent. “When it comes to keeping schools safe, it is important to be aware of who is in the district’s buildings at all times.”

We couldn’t agree more. Kudos to our local school districts for taking steps to making the school day safer for our students.