Can You Hear Me Now...?


Safety, efficiency spark evolution in schools’ mobile communications By Art Gissendaner


Mobile communication, especially in rural areas, is a growing challenge for student transporters and vendors to solve. O


n what began as a normal school day in August 2007 ended chaotically for Glen Ellyn School District No. 41, about 25 miles west of downtown Chicago. School was letting out when a tornado struck with almost no warning.


Te community’s aging infrastructure, already susceptible to


power outages, was no match for the storm’s intensity. Power failed at two buildings and the district’s administrative


offices, effectively isolating those sites from the outside world. Without an adequate backup power supply, land-line phones, computers and e-mails were muted. Cell phones were useless because the acute increase in caller


activity overloaded the network. Te district’s two-way analog radios functioned but could not reach beyond the perimeters of each campus.


52 School Transportation News Magazine October 2011 While most students were hunkered down inside their


buildings, several busloads of students were stranded on their routes by fallen trees. Teir status was unknown because the storm had in effect rendered the district’s administration blind, deaf and dumb. Administrators could not see or hear where the buses were and thus lacked the ability to even ask where the buses were. Frantic parents defied the raging storm and began showing up


at the schools looking for their children. “It was a real mess,” recounted Assistant Superintendent Bob


Ciserella. “Bus drivers were able to communicate with the bus barn with their two-way radios but not with the rest of the district. And our lines to the bus barn were down. Tose buses had just left when the storm hit. It is something you never forget.”


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