SPECIAL REPORT
“The app gives parents peace of mind,
and it’s cut down half of their calls to us,” said Kevin Easley, school transportation director at Raytown Quality Schools, who detailed the district’s experience with Wi-Fi at the 2017 STN EXPO Reno. “Now they know where their children are faster than when they called us to track down the bus and [we called] them back with an update about the location.” Students also connect their mobile de-
vices with the bus Wi-Fi to do homework and communicate with their teachers while riding to school. The district said it believes it has made a good investment in bus Wi-Fi, because it has increased educational minutes for students and provided more support for teachers.
Helping Districts Save Money Shelby Eastern Schools, a small district
in Indiana, uses Wi-Fi and a telematics platform to collect data from its bus fleet and identify inefficiencies. Using Zonar’s Ground Traffic Control system, the district was able to analyze its routes and fuel us- age to identify cost savings. It also helped the transportation team spot-check driv- ers, to verify if they were following safety procedures while on the road. It took less than a month for the trans-
portation team to calculate the cost of its 19 routes, in terms of time, fuel and labor. The district found that by eliminating one route and restructuring other routes, it would save about $80,000 in opera- tional costs for the upcoming academic year. And then every year after that. “The savings made a significant
impact,” said Katrina Falk, assistant trans- portation director for the rural district. “We were able to justify a pay increase for our contracted drivers.” A few other benefits: An analysis of their diesel-powered fleet proved to the school board that the current fleet of buses could run more efficiently than replacing them with alternative fuel ve- hicles. And by monitoring school buses on their routes, the team can make sure the drivers are going the speed limit, following proper railroad crossing proce- dures and activating stop-arms.
22 School Transportation News • SEPTEMBER 2019
STN Reader Survey Says:
36% foresee the
emergence of 5G as revolutionizing the flow of data to and from school buses
271 responses
of school buses do not currently use Wi-Fi to transfer
83%
data to and from the school bus (i.e., for downloading video) 282 responses
Realizing Other Benefits of School Bus Wi-Fi Respondents to a survey conducted this summer by School Transportation News described their expectations and uses for Wi-Fi on their school buses. For the upcoming year, the Wamego School District in Kansas equipped its buses with Wi-Fi to run a surveillance program from Transportant. The system integrates cameras with live streaming video, audio and GPS with an applica- tion, so that operations can track buses and monitor student behavior. In Charleston, West Virginia, the school buses that are equipped with Wi-Fi are used to create hotspots in the community, where there are no internet connections. Over the last several years, the buses have been placed at football games, so students and parents can fill out college paperwork for financial aid. They also discovered that having Wi-Fi on the buses occupied students and im- proved behavior on long trips. But the survey also showed that many
districts don’t have Wi-Fi capability on school buses. It’s part of an issue referred to as the digital divide between students with and without access to new technol- ogy at home.
Push to Get Bus Wi-Fi Some federal lawmakers want to
ensure that all students have internet access, and school buses are proposed as the guaranteed place to access a connection for homework. A bipartisan bill, co-sponsored by Sen. Tom Udall of New Mexico, would require the Federal Communications Commission’s E-rate program to reimburse school districts that install Wi-Fi technology on school buses. If passed into law, it could help close the technology gap and provide dis- tricts with greater capability to tap into applications. And it would come at an opportune time for school districts to leverage powerful mobile communi- cation and technology advances that will soon be made possible by 5G net- works. ●
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