that cost is a benefit of using the cloud. “You pay a premium annually to do it. It’s worth the


money as far as man hours and the time,” Price ex- plained. “And it’s helped in investigations regarding incidents on the bus.” Joshua Rice, the current president of the Texas Associ-


ation of Pupil Transportation and the new transportation director at Barbers Hill ISD located east of Houston, noted that, “Cloud technology allows us to work collab- oratively at the same time. Cloud-based storage is the wave of the future. We don’t have to rely so much on local storage solutions and staff knowledge. “People want access to information, and they want it


at their fingertips. It’s very similar to moving from paper in the office to digital, or even scanning documents. It allows us easier access to information and takes up less physical space in our office,” he added. School districts store a lot more information in the


cloud than they realize, Rice said. “Some of our routing programs, student tracking, and


student information systems all store information in the cloud versus on a local server,” he added. “Cloud storage works out very well. You are able to access information on the go whether it be on your desktop, laptop, or phone. Very rarely is your information unable to be accessed. I feel like it’s a very trustworthy resource to utilize.” Sellers in Louisiana said he favors the ability of access- ing and uploading GPS data to his routing and planning software, viewing actual routes versus planned routes, and receiving geofence boundary alerts to know when buses start and stop their routes. He also gets student data on routes, location pick-up and drop-off as well as student guardian phone numbers. “I access e-Link via my iPad, laptop or desktop com-


puter,” said Sellers. “We have assigned login information for our school bus drivers so they can access their as- signed bus information on their phones. “We are also installing a printer in my office so they can use their phones to print out data as needed. This allows the drivers to inform us of differences between what they observe on their buses and what we have in Routing & Planning and make changes as needed.” Looking ahead, Sellers said he would like to implement


Arrival Board for the schools to access data as well as adding My Stop student tracking for parent access. “I know this will relieve the worry of most of our parents


about where the bus is so they can be closer to home when their student arrives,” Sellers says. “I am eagerly awaiting future remote access so I can help people in emergencies and on a regular basis without yanking my hair out.” Jeff Wainwright, director of transportation for Sarato-


38 School Transportation News • JANUARY 2022


ga Springs City School District in New York state, noted when his operations moved to the cloud to store and access data two years ago, it was to “eliminate the need to have data on district servers and to have a district IT tech available when Tyler Technologies support needed to access the server.” The district adopted Versatrans Routing & Planning,


Onscreen, and eLink. Wainwright noted while a learning curve was involved in setting up Parallel Clients and WinSCP for reports, “Tyler Technologies helped facilitate this process with their support. The biggest learning curve is with WinSCP, which entails more steps to complete reporting.” The process has worked out well. “Overall, it’s much better due to not having to involve our


tech department during times when Tyler support needs to access data on our server,” he said. “We are now working on migration to Tyler Traversa which will be totally web-based.” As for security concerns in placing data in the cloud,


Wainwright says there hasn’t been any impact on secu- rity of data due to the high level of security placed on student data with Tyler Technologies. Nestico in New York, meanwhile, pointed out data


breaches occur whether or not something is in the cloud. He shared that before he commits to a certain vendor to migrate district data to the cloud, he’s looking for flexibili- ty of transition and interoperability of software programs. “Nobody likes change,” he added. “The biggest fear I


have is changing ease and converting everything over.” Texas’ Rice noted Google Drive is one of the biggest


cloud storage solutions available. “For a lot of school districts that already utilize Google,


you are able to take advantage of some good storage ca- pacity,” he added. “Google has a host of usable resources like Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides. We use these daily to track driver attendance, training, master staffing schedules, vehicle reservations, parent calls. We even store videos in the cloud and give campuses access to them. This keeps us from having to store them on local servers, which takes up local resources and bogs down our internet speeds.” McCormick in Wisconsin advised other districts


considering a cloud-based program to ensure the avail- ability of a stable Internet connection. “The best part about it is that we can now access this


information anywhere we want to,” he said. “If you’re looking for something that’s going to be mobile, this is the way to go. We are able to go to schools, have meet- ings and conferences and be able to pull it right up on our computer because it’s web based,” McCormick concluded. ●


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