around accidents and traffic jams to improve the district’s on-time percentage. “Now we can punch in a bus number
and find out where that bus is in near real-time, and the system will let us know the speed of the bus,” Mitchell says. “If the driver deviates from the route, we are able to see that, too. Te system also has the potential to help in bad weather situations.” Because of the size of Mobile County
and the number of drivers, he says the feature that allows drivers to clock in and out on their smartphones without coming to the bus yard is a plus. Besides the increased efficiency,
Mitchell cites another positive outcome he did not see coming. “Te overall number of parental
complaints decreased,” he says. “Parents were elated about it.”
AT&T ENHANCED PUSH-TO- TALK AND THE SMARTPHONE Te ever-increasing speed of conducting
business and the harsh realities of natural and man-made disasters make rapid, reliable communications more important than ever. No profession is more keenly aware
of this than in the education field where the safety and training of our most precious resource is the responsibility
of everyone, from administrators to custodians. A growing number of school districts are addressing these concerns by turning to AT&T’s Enhanced Push-to- Talk solution to speed up and broaden communications. “We are seeing momentum behind
school districts starting to adopt the Enhanced Push-to-Talk service,” says AT&T spokesman Richard Marvin. “Some of the districts that recently have signed on to use the service are using it in tandem with a vehicle location service, such as school bus tracking. It makes sense to have both systems in place to address safety and the immediacy of communications.” AT&T Executive Director of Mobility
Solutions Igor Glubochansky says Enhanced Push-to-Talk enables the user to press a button and, in less than a second, communicate with hundreds of associates in multiple locations. “Tink about those communications
with school bus drivers or workers doing repair work,” Glubochansky says. “Tey don’t need to get on a conference call. Instant communications can save an hour a day as opposed to making 300 calls by dialing numbers to selected contacts.” He notes that all the Enhanced
Push-to-Talk features can be accessed in one place — the smartphone. “You
can combine push to talk with other applications to dispatch, tracking, work orders and time cards. All the things you would do on paper, such as bus inspections, now go in the smartphone.” Glubochansky says the Enhanced
Push-to-Talk is designed for any industry that deploys people in the field, but adds that education is “a key vertical” for AT&T. “It is designed for any industry with people that need instant communications, such as transportation and maintenance in school districts.”
CONNECTING BOERNE ISD Instant communications districtwide
is exactly what Craig Radtke, director of personnel and legal affairs, was looking for in the Boerne Independent School District outside San Antonio, Texas. His main concern was the inability of district personnel to communicate with each other beyond campus boundaries in crisis situations. “Districtwide, our communications
and emergency preparedness were in need of significant improvement,” Radtke recalls. “We live in a pretty idyllic community, so the perception is ‘nothing can go wrong in Boerne’. Tere was a great deal of complacency.” Boerne ISD is a rural community
nestled in the scenic Texas Hill Country
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