A San Antonio (Texas) Independent School District bus drives through the transportation facility. San Antonio is one of the district’s using Transfinder’s parent app Stopfinder.
[therefore] communication has to be loca- tion-based. Our clients can send very specific notifications to a parent or group of parents. You see how it’s evolved. It’s not just tracking the bus anymore. It’s beyond that. Parents can also communicate with the transportation depart- ment using the app. It could be a question or concern. It’s private and secure and it’s one on one at that point. In January, we had 2.5 million notifications to parents on bus location.” San Antonio Independent School District in
Texas is one of the district’s using Stopfinder to help parents obtain peace of mind. Director of Transportation Nathan Graf said the two-way communication with parents has cut down on the number of phone calls that transportation normally receives. Now parents can instantly message dispatchers at SAISD asking about a lost item on a school bus, for example, and parents will receive a response on whether that item was found. Meanwhile, Bill Westerman, who up until last month was the vice president of product management for Cal/Amp, said the Here Comes the Bus (HCTB) app is very popular among par- ents. “Cal/Amp is the leading provider of K-12 parent apps. Several million parents are using it nationwide,” Westerman said. “The feedback we’re getting is people are dependent on it now, they’ve become accustomed to having that information. It’s useful because they can plan their day more effectively. It can be a driver for school districts to get GPS. “Another thing is the scan also goes in real time to the parent,” Westerman continued. “So, they know if their child got on and off the bus.” He pointed out that ridership is important to
know where a child is, but in the unfortunate circumstance of an accident, law enforcement and parents will want to know who is on the bus. He added that for security purposes parents are supplied only with information about their child’s bus. He said monitoring ridership gives a clear
picture of how many riders are really using the service. “Without it, planners and transportation officials are just making guesses of how many kids you’re transporting every day,” Westerman said. “You can miss opportunities to consoli- date routes because you may have thought you were transporting 20 kids when you were only transporting 10.”
Cal/Amp is beta testing a card scan that will
display an image of the cardholder on a tablet so the driver can better identify the child. “We are also including a seating chart so drivers can assign seats and that will help with discipline if kids don’t get along you can separate them,” Westerman explained. “Assigned seats also tend to allow the loading to happen faster. These are things to help student ridership operate more effectively. For most of our customers who obtain student ridership, they are doing it in conjunction with a tablet. It has other applica- tions such as clock in and out and navigation. It also comes in handy because when scanning a child’s ID, it can compare that child’s name to the names of the riders that have been assigned to that bus and bus stop. It’s another layer of se- curity. There are too many times kids get off at the wrong spot and as luck will have it, it’s not in the best part of town. So, with this check system, people are less likely to make mistakes.” MyView, Zonar’s parent app, allows parents to track the school bus their children are riding. Zonar spokesman Larry Meyers said that during a driver shortage, more so than ever it is vital to make sure students are getting on and off the bus and that they are getting to the right place. “My understanding is that parents are very happy with the product,” Meyers said. “We’re all about safety and having the proper routing of the bus regardless of whether you have a substi- tute or a new driver, it all leads back to the safety of the student. MyView enables parents to track the bus on its route. With the driver shortage we want to make sure that we make it as easy as possible for drivers. We will use any tool we can to put the driver at ease. Zonar already had student ridership tracking with Z-Pass.” Westerman said that regardless of the vendor school districts may choose, student ridership and school bus tracking should be strongly considered. “Certainly, to be able to track the school bus,
and ideally to be able to track the students,” Wes- terman said. “We have a lot of people using it for time and attendance so they can accurately pay drivers. Once the infrastructure is in place, it is not costly to add the parent app. In some places, if a child misses a bus, they don’t go to school that day, so there’s an educational component to this by getting kids to school on time.” ●
Read more about San Antonio’s use of technology and student transportation services at stnonline. com/go/et.
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