plained. “We didn’t know how many people didn’t have connectivity [before the pandemic]. And if we did, most people didn’t care. Since COVID-19, we all know [how many people don’t have coverage] and the world cares. I can’t imagine going back and taking away equality from kids.” Bogle broke down the annual cost of school bus Wi-Fi
connectivity to costing four cents a day per student. She arrived at that figure by calculating that about $40 per month per bus breaks down to $2 a day for 20 educa- tional school days. Then she divided by an average of 50 student passengers on the bus each day. “From a long-term sustainability [standpoint], schools
have lots of programs they invest in. Which ones pro- vide the maximum return to the maximum number of students for the lowest dollar value?” she asked. “This is a match once you’ve paid for the equipment, and whether you’re using ECF funding or other funding, your sustainable costs are low. And if we take it past the four cents per student, just to provide them with equity and access, let’s also look at what it does from a safety standpoint.”
She explained that school bus Wi-Fi not only helps
students obtain more educational hours, but it can also provide video cameras with live stream viewing, which
becomes extremely helpful if a school bus gets in a crash or if a hostage situation or student health emergency takes place onboard. She added that having real-time access to footage,
also provides real-time consequences. For instance, if a student pulls another student’s hair and the incident is viewed by staff via the live cameras, once that student gets off the bus they can immediately be directed to the principal’s office. “Now, you have real-time consequences,” she said. “You can make an impactful difference because when you [ad- dress the situation] two and three days later, the act and the consequence are no longer married together.” Meanwhile, Michael Flood, the senior vice president and general manager of education at Kajeet, added that the school bus Wi-Fi conversation usually starts with aca- demics. “It is really giving students more time to work on their academic pursuits, which could be as simple as their homework on a daily basis, or it could be other projects, research collaborative work that they’re doing with their peers,” Flood said. “It could be related to an extracurric- ular activity that they’re participating in [and] the bus is transporting them to. For example, if it’s a debate team and they’re traveling to a debate event, they might be do- ing some of their prep work with online research on their
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48 School Transportation News • JUNE 2022
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