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Students are counted on and off the bus by the driver, who may enter the information into a tablet or Mobile Data Terminal (MDT), or the data automatically transfers via the student’s RFID card or a key fob. Each of the three largest school bus contracting companies offers its own app. Districts that contract with Durham School Services can utilize the Durham Bus Tracker app. It tracks 356,400 students who ride 19,000 routes across 68 districts. “Most recent features that we have added to the app include estimated time of arrival and tracking field trips,” said spokeswoman Kate Walden. SafeStop, released by Student Transportation, Inc. in 2014, provides a solution that “works with any GPS provid- er, any routing software, and any transportation system,” says the company website. Last August, Audrey McClel- land, a blogger at
MomGenerations.com and a self-styled “digital hustler” with hundreds of thousands of social media followers, listed SafeStop as one of her top five back-to- school apps. “On the mornings we’re rushing late, I can check to see exactly where the bus is, and on the days it’s running late from school, I can check, too!” she wrote. First Student is testing the FirstView app in 20 districts.
Acceptance of Bus, Student Tracking Apps Accelerate
WRITTEN BY CLAUDIA NEWTON |
CLAUDIA@STNONLINE.COM “W
here’s the school bus?” is one of the first questions asked by parents each morning. Increasingly, app developers are providing the answer not just for school districts but also for families.
Safety, convenience and efficiency are the major goals of technology companies
that provide the apps. “No parent wants their student waiting in the cold too long, and no transportation office needs hundreds of more phone calls during a stressful delay,” noted Gia Davis, director of marketing for Tyler Technologies. Parental “peace of mind” is an important objective also stressed by the likes of Zonar, UbicaBus and Durham School Services. “Parents typically are not signing up for the service until there is a
problem,” said Jason Kee, transportation supervisor at Ohio’s Newark City Schools, which offers SafeStop. He added that once parents try the app they enjoy its features, and the transportation department now fields fewer calls about bus location and arrival. Te basic function of each app is to provide parents or guardians accurate, instant information on where their child’s bus is in the morning and afternoon.
28 School Transportation News • JANUARY 2018
Its development, said spokesman Chris Kemper, began in April 2016 with a nationwide tour to learn what parents and transportation staff were looking for in a student tracking app. “We didn’t want to assume anything,” he said. “We wanted to make sure we provided a product that was valuable for all the parties, and I think that’s what we have.” A full roll out is scheduled for this fall. In the interest of freeing up transportation depart- ments, the FirstView app includes a help button that connects directly to the company. “We want parents to reach out to our customer care,” said Claire Miller, senior vice president of marketing and business develop- ment. Staff can then answer any questions related to app functionality, bus location or student registration. Not content to simply track the bus, however, some companies are offering parents a way to track their chil- dren individually. Synovia, the self-proclaimed “largest parent app company,” launched Here Comes the Bus in 2015 and already has 180,000 accounts. Te basic app only allows parents to track the bus their child rides, but a district can add the student ridership option that tracks the student, either through a barcode scanned when they board or exit, or through information entered by the driver into Synovia’s MDT. Zonar Systems offers bus tracking and other benefits to transportation departments through fleet manage- ment solutions. For parents, it offers student tracking via the passive RFID “Z Pass” card, with updates provided on the Z Pass+ app. Tyler Technologies currently only offers bus tracking
on its Versatrans My Stop and Traversa 360 apps. But in keeping with “parent-facing applications that work for today’s parents on today’s platforms,” parents can log
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