The sun sets on biometric tracking technology in schools, for now in Florida. Do you know where your student is? At school? On the bus? Paying for lunch in the cafeteria?

Principals in thousands of the nation’s schools know the answer because radio frequency chips are embedded in students’ ID cards, or their schools are equipped with biometric scanners that can identify portions of a student’s fingerprint, the iris of an eye, or a vein in a palm.

Such technologies have become increasingly common in schools, which use them to take attendance, alert parents where their children get off the school bus, or speed up lunch lines.

But those tools, which are supposed to make schools safer and more efficient, have become a flashpoint for controversy.

Several states are now banning or restricting the use of the technology in schools, as worries over student privacy have risen amid breaches of government and commercial computer databases.

This year, Florida became the first state to ban the use of biometric identification in its schools.

Kansas said biometric data cannot be collected without student or parental consent.

New Hampshire, Colorado, and North Carolina said the state education departments cannot collect and store biometric data as part of student records.

New Hampshire and Missouri lawmakers said schools can’t require students to use ID cards equipped with radio frequency identification (RFID) technology that can track them.

The new laws are similar to one Oregon passed last year and what Rhode Island Iawmakers passed in 2009.

The laws reflect a growing sense of unease among parents and lawmakers about new technology, how it?s being used, what student data is being collected and stored and what security protects the information.