out pulling the hard drive as well as the ability to view what’s happening inside the bus in real time when the bus is connected to a hotspot. Rodriguez said the ability to down- load the video without removing the hard drive extends the life of the hard drive and lessens the chance that it will be corrupted. Te hard drives were upgraded to 2 TB on each bus. Rodriguez said the motivation for upgrading was that the old system was outdated, and that posed a threat to student safety. “Te last thing we wanted was to have a camera fail in a critical situation,” he said. “We had situations on the bus where there was a camera failure and we could not view the video. To me that’s consid- ered a safety issue and it needed to be dealt with immediately.” Rodriguez said the Wi-Fi gives staff the time to react to situations in a timely manner. “If we get a call while the bus is in a Wi-Fi zone, supervisors, management and dis- patch can look in live,” he said. “We can tap into a bus from our smart phones for live feeds. Tat makes it so much easier.” Robert Scott, vice president at 24/7 Security Inc., said he has noticed an “uptick” in interest in HD systems. “We’re seeing school districts becoming aware of HD so they are certainly starting to look at them. He said. “More and more HD camera systems are coming on the market.” Curtiss Routh, vice president for sales at REI, said high-definition and IP cameras have been around for a while but school districts did not take notice because they were satisfied with the older technology of analog cameras. “We’re hearing about it more often because companies are using that as a differentiator from the competition,” Routh said. “Because they are pushing it to schools, schools are talking about it more.” Tim Owen, transportation
director for the Magnolia Indepen- dent School District just north of Houston, said moving from an old digital system to an updated system
allows for a combination of a hybrid digital and solid state storage system that also features the redundancy of a secure digital (SD) memory card. Instead of pulling the hard drive, district staff simply remove the SD card to view the video, he added, and the SD card increases system durability, should the rigors of the road corrupt the hard drive. He said the new system is faster, easier and more efficient. Similar systems are in use in other school districts. Owen added that the newer sys- tem will save the district money in the long run because the older sys- tems will be phased out eventually and the district wouldn’t be able to find replacement parts. “If we want to remain on the cutting edge, this is what we need to do,” he said. “Te administration and school board bought into it for the safety of our kids and everybody else involved.”
THE HOUSTON EXPERIENCE Te Houston Independent School
District has been upgrading for some time, according to senior fleet manager Andres Montes, installing Wi-Fi on about half of the fleet’s 1,100 buses. Montes called the upgrades a natural evolution. “We went to high definition to down- load videos more efficiently,” he said. “Also, we wanted to be able to pinpoint more clearly when we have
50 School Transportation News • AUGUST 2016
High-definition cameras have become a necessity for illegal passing programs and to adequately identify license plate numbers, make and model of vehicles and sometimes, even the driver’s face.
issues with traffic, students or even with drivers. Traffic here is heavy. When there are accidents we need to see who is at fault, and a lot of times the public is at fault.” Houston uses an eight-camera system with seven active channels that provide maximum internal and external coverage. Montes added that the district is currently conducting a pilot program to download videos via Wi-Fi. He said that more Wi-Fi zones are needed around the city so video download capabilities can be expand- ed. He pointed out that technicians, safety and risk management person- nel have the ability to go into the field and manually download videos to tablets whenever there are issues that need investigating. Eventually, Wi-Fi routers will be installed at each of the district’s remaining bus yards. “Te new hard drives have a
six-week memory,” Montes said. “So when the buses come in we can download the information and hold it longer than six weeks. We can address any issues within 24 hours.” It’s this dedication to staying abreast of technological advancements that may bring the Houston ISD through one of the most tragic events in its history. Last September, two Hous- ton ISD students were killed when the school bus they were riding in breached an overpass railing and fell 21 feet to the road below, landing on
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