PARENTS WANT THIS T
he days of the parent concerned about their child’s safety but hes- itant about technology designed to electronically track the child
are waning, according to technology manufac- turers who report that the typical parental profile has evolved to the point where they are pres- suring school districts to acquire bus tracking and student ridership technology so they know where their children are and when they will be delivered home or to their school. “Overwhelmingly, parents want this tech- nology, they are embracing this technology,” commented Transfinder CEO Antonio Civitella. “Parents are the ones who are screaming for the app. They see other districts have it and they’re asking why don’t I have it? Parents are going to board meetings and requesting this app. Really, parents are driving this now.”
Civitella noted most parents of school bus riders are tech savvy. “They want this and have been asking for this tool for a long time,” he said, adding that school districts are responding by pursuing the technology and holding training sessions to teach parents how to use it. “They want to make sure parents are using the
32 School Transportation News • MARCH 2023
product,” Civitella said. “Our clients recognize that if they have a higher participation rate from the parents, they will get fewer calls to the trans- portation department asking what time are you going to pick up my kid. Now [parents] can look this up themselves.” Civitella said in response to this demand,
Transfinder, an industry leader in routing software, has developed Stopfinder, a parental app that allows parents to access bus route and bus stop information. Parents can also tell when their child boards and exits the school bus and receive geo alerts when the bus has entered an alert zone, determined by the parents, that alerts the parent that the bus is near to a stop or to the school. Civitella added that the “secret sauce” for
Stopfinder is the individualized two-way com- munication their clients have with parents. “We have a lot of communication tools in there that say only bus 12 students’ parents will get this notification,” Civitella explained. “In the past when schools blasted out notifications to parents it went to everybody, even when bus 29 was running late. So, when parents get irrele- vant information, they stop paying attention,
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