than one percent of customers still need to migrate. Bill Westerman, senior vice president of product management at CalAmp, said that even though his GPS customers were notified in advance, a few decided to wait. “We’ve gone through several of these sunset situa- tions and maybe it’s human nature, but it’s amazing how many customers decide to wait until the last minute and then expect us to be able to turn on a dime and refresh all their units,” Westerman said. “We’re being a little more pushy because we’re at the mercy of the supply chain issue and we don’t have the flexibility that we had previ- ously in other sunset routines, so it’s better for people to decide sooner rather than later so we can get the hard- ware delivered in time to be installed, and they don’t have a disruption in their service.” Westerman also pointed to the dearth of the micro-
processors. “There are chips in every piece, in the GPS tracking device and even in the readers,” he said. “GPS is really the prime thing that’s holding us up getting those units in place.” Brandon Coonrod, assistant transportation director for
Portland Public Schools in Oregon, said his department was notified about the 3G sunset more than a year ago, but plans to upgrade were slowed because the district had to go to bid while dealing with COVID and a short- age of drivers. “We were going to do something [last] summer, but this pushed us back past the Christmas break,” said Coonrod, who has to drive a bus because of the driver shortage. “If COVID hadn’t hit, we would have had it all done.” Portland selected CalAmp as its vendor. After some
instruction from a CalAmp representative on the first 10 buses, district mechanics completed the installs on the remaining 95 buses owned by the district, which also contracts with First Student to transport its special education students. Upgrades began on Portland’s buses during spring
break in March. As of press time, Coonrod said mechan- ics had updgraded three dozen buses, as supply chain issues delayed the arrival data connection cables. Plus, he added, mechanics had to split their time between the upgrades and normal vehicle service and repairs.
42 School Transportation News • MAY 2022
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