Craig Beaver and Cliff Harrell, shop supervisor, review bus diagnostics. Beaverton School District has a robust high school internship program that has resulted in district hiring mechanics right out of high school. Read more about the internship program and the perspectives of former interns at
stnonline.com/go/kq.
is an equity piece,” Feldhan added. “When you have these programs that maybe in other districts would require a parent to transport, you are excluding some people access to these programs that might be really good fits for them.” He said the extra work performed by the routing teams
provides students with the opportunity to access educa- tional programs they otherwise couldn’t.
Looking at Other Technology In addition to the Tyler Technologies routing system,
Beaver said about two to three years ago all school buses were outfitted with tablets and a student tracking app for parents. With the app, he said parents can determine the zone size of when they want to be notified, including a notification if the bus is two blocks away, for exam- ple. GPS was already installed on all buses back in 2015. Beaverton also upgraded its Seon cameras systems from Safe Fleet to include at least four cameras on every bus. Large buses have six cameras. Plus, he said, video foot- age now automatically downloads. Russell noted that when he arrived at the district over
12 years ago, Beaverton was running very rudimentary camera systems on the bus. But he noted that technolo- gy changes, and Beaver implemented more wide-angle lenses. He said that the cameras are a great driver coaching tool and alleviate allegations against drivers by
44 School Transportation News • NOVEMBER 2024
students and parents. Just this year, Oregon passed a bill allowing cameras
on school buses to catch instances of illegal passing. However, the stop-arm cameras aren’t something that Beaver said he and his team are currently interested in. He noted that every year his bus drivers participate in the one-day count of illegal passers, with results pub- lished by the National Association of State Directors of Pupil Transportation Services. Beaver said his district’s numbers are not “horrendously bad.” “And they’re not tremendously great either,” he added. However, he said the district has a rigorous student
crossing criteria, based on the number of lanes on the road, the visibility, the cars traveling on that road per hour, the age of the student, and whether the intersec- tion is controlled or not. While the districts implemented ID cards for students,
Beaver said the program has been a challenge. Transpor- tation doesn’t use the RFID card technology. Instead, his system uses a barcode for preschool, kindergarten and first grade students, with a continuous rollout. He noted the challenge is each student needs to place the barcode directly on the reader. If the ID card is on a backpack, for example, it takes the student longer to board as they try to locate it. He said his team is looking forward to upgrading to a RFID card system students can use by simply walking past the reader.
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