search.noResults

search.searching

dataCollection.invalidEmail
note.createNoteMessage

search.noResults

search.searching

orderForm.title

orderForm.productCode
orderForm.description
orderForm.quantity
orderForm.itemPrice
orderForm.price
orderForm.totalPrice
orderForm.deliveryDetails.billingAddress
orderForm.deliveryDetails.deliveryAddress
orderForm.noItems
SPECIAL REPORT


Higley Unified School District located outside of Phoenix is turning to a new solution from


CalAmp for performing contact tracing


when a sick student has ridden the school bus.


Cleaning, Screening and


Accountability Student transporters seek tech solutions to get buses rolling, track COVID-19 infections.


Written By Jim Romeo W


hen he analyzed recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Pre- vention (CDC) on social distancing and calculated how they would affect passen-


ger capacity on school buses, Josh Crosby realized the new school year would be the strangest he’s experienced. The director of transportation for Higley Unified School


District 60 in Gilbert, Arizona, located just outside of Phoe- nix, determined that if he and his staff were to follow the CDC guidelines, it would take a fleet of 83 buses roughly nine hours to get the kids to school in the morning and then nine hours to get them home in the afternoon. “That’s not anything that we can do,” added Crosby, who is used to transporting 13,800 students per day. “Our district, and I know many others, we’re just not able to comply with those CDC recommendations,” he continued. “Our fleet is already running a triple run in the morning and a triple run in the afternoon. Each of our full-size buses will typically have 60 to 65 students on each route and we’re running … three routes starting


18 School Transportation News • SEPTEMBER 2020


at 6 a.m. all the way up till 9:30 in the morning. We just don’t have the fleet or the drivers or the time to be able to space our routes out.” Higley USD had prepared for an in-person reopening


but scrapped the plan as the district’s scheduled startup date drew near. The state became a pandemic hotspot. The preparations were merely an exercise on the path to reopening, whenever that occurs. Higley and many oth- er districts in the country have searched for support, and many are finding it in fleet management technology, some of which is already in use. The districts are repur- posing some of the applications but also buying add-ons and new technologies that vendors are developing just for the COVID-19 virus.


The Critical Path There are about 131,000 K-12 schools in the U.S. It’s dif-


ficult to say just how many are offering some version of in-person education, though at this writing all but one of the nation’s largest urban school districts are going fully


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  |  Page 61  |  Page 62