pupil transportation for the company. “We anticipate even more districts having Wi-Fi on their fleets with next year’s round of funding.” The other more obvious challenge Safety Vision and other vendors have faced was that E-rate hasn’t been offered for school buses before, only for classrooms and libraries. Safety Vision had to educate its employees as well as school district customers on program in’s and out’s. Another issue is the evolution of Wi-Fi technology. “We used to provide
equipment that had from 2 GB to 5 GB of data for a school bus,” Bryer said. “Now, everyone wants unlimited data, and some carriers don’t provide that much” Safety Vision works with the school district to devise a plan and they
also control and collect data on what the bus usage is. “We realize that people were skeptical about kids using the internet on the bus for home- work. Now, we can go to a school and say that a certain bus had 80,000 hours of homework time last year,” said Bryer. “Presenting back to the school that we’re seeing 60 hours of homework being done on one bus last month really proves that Wi-Fi is beneficial and that the bus truly is an extension of the classroom. We also have students doing homework on their way to a football game or on a field trip. Any driver knows that keep- ing kids busy on the bus lets them concentrate on the road.” Where Bryer said providers like Safety Vision have an advantage is that
the E-Rate wording states that up to 10 percent of the total funding each year can be used for ancillary services. “Video camera systems apply to that,” he explained. “This helps a school district because historically, the cost has been too high for most districts. Now for example, if one of our customers wants on board Wi-Fi and they receive funding for it, 10 per- cent of that data can be for the camera system.” He referred to the opportunity as a “two-for-one deal funded by the
government” and a big reason why customers like Clark County School District in Las Vegas, Nevada, and school districts located around the Houston, Texas, area have signed on to the program with Safety Vision. Video camera company Gatekeeper also now offers Wi-Fi. “Our overall
suite of services is quite broad,” said Heather Urquart, Gatekeeper’s market- ing director, of the company’s Mobile Wireless Module. “We aren’t focused only on school bus Wi-Fi, that is just one extra solution that we offer. For many of our districts, we provide video inside and 360-degrees outside the bus, including stop arm cameras. With these systems also comes all the data we manage. We have customers who are very interested in wireless solu- tions, so they can download all their video footage instead of going out to each bus. We are seeing an uptick in having Wi-Fi for students on the bus.” Dave Wiegle, Gatekeeper’s system and support manager, added that the
company prefers to use a school district’s existing content filter. “Most of our schools use the Wi-Fi in conjunction with our DVR on the bus, and we add on the Wi-Fi, as it all ties together. Although we could certainly do a stand-alone Wi-Fi, most of our customers added the Wi-Fi onto their existing system, which does live GPS tracking and video download.” Wiegle added that the only downside to student Wi-Fi on the bus is
the cellular coverage. “That’s where things can slow down,” he said. “But our customers love the idea that the students can do homework in what would otherwise be down time, especially on long routes and the kids are on for an hour or so. Personally, I remember bus rides an hour and a half long, and I wish it had been available then.”
38 School Transportation News • MAY 2024
15%
of transportation directors/ supervisors said they have Wi-Fi hotspots on their school buses.
(Out of 97 responses to an STN magazine reader survey.)
PHOTO COURTESY OF FARMINGTON MUNICIPAL SCHOOLS
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60
