File photo of a transportation dispatch center for Poway Unified School District in Southern California. Real-time updates on school bus routes are among the technology advancements that are addressing safety, efficiency and staffing needs.
Behr recommended that districts adding a new tech system should expect a 6- to 12-month settling-in period with plenty of ongoing training because “even though they’re using it every day, it doesn’t mean they’re using it right,” she noted. She said she believes a system’s value is only as good as a team’s ability to use it properly and effectively. “We like to be able to pilot it for at least a little bit so if [employees] have a little trouble with it or they don’t understand it, then we’re not going to get that program,” she noted. “Or, if it’s something that does what we need but they’re not quite catching on, we may go ahead and move forward with it. That’s when we look at the program’s customer service. If we’re reaching out and not hearing back on anything, then that may not be the program we want to go with.”
40 School Transportation News • NOVEMBER 2022
She continued, “If, for some reason, we can’t test it out,
we like to go to neighboring districts that may already uti- lize the program and spend a day with them to see what it looks like, what it does, and ask them for their feedback on customer service because we don’t want to jump into something that they don’t like and that doesn’t work.” Behr said the Hays CISD transportation department,
which provides service for more than half of the district’s 23,000-plus students, plans on a six- to seven-year life cycle for camera systems and may recycle them from a bus being taken out of service to install them in a newer vehicle. Meanwhile, Katie Delano, director of transportation
at the Coalinga-Huron Unified School District in Cal- ifornia, has found it more advantageous to replace camera systems but her department recently stripped
PHOTO COURTESY OF BYTECURVE.
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