"It will be a peace of mind for us," said Charlie Stillian, USD 457 director of transportation.
The new system, which the district is acquiring from Tyler Technologies, will monitor information such as the location and speed of the buses and send diagnostic codes for engine problems so they can be fixed before they become worse or the bus stops running entirely, Stillian said.The system costs $87,286.
The system will solve or reduce a number of concerns that school transportation officials, staff, parents and students have faced during previous years.
For example, during bad weather, parents often have called the school to check where their children's buses are and if they're in good shape, said Roy Cessna, USD 457 public information coordinator. Drivers must then not only focus on their routes, but also check for children and relay the information back to the school.
In addition, children move in and out of the district during the school year, so drivers sometimes don't know all their students and must pull the bus to the roadside to see if a particular student is on board, he said.
After the system is in place, students will have cards they can swipe as they get on the bus, and parents will be able to download a free application to a smartphone or other mobile device that will let them track only the bus in which their children are traveling. The parents will have a distinctive user name and password, provided by the district, so only they can access their application.
"It's going to be safer all around with the driver paying attention to what's on the road," Stillian said.
Parents also will be able to check scheduled bus-stop arrival times and estimated arrival times, and parents with more than one child can switch between students to see where they are on different buses. The system will also send notifications to certain parents or all parents if buses run behind schedule, according to a district press release.
The system is also able to track fuel costs, serve as a time clock for drivers and monitor a bus' speed, hard accelerations and hard braking, although Stillian said the district rarely has problems with its drivers.
Stillian said the district chose the Tyler Technologies system because of its ability to provide diagnostic information for the bus mechanics.
"We can catch problems and pull the buses off the line," Cessna said.
Stillian gave an example of one of the mechanical problems the new system will prevent.
One driver accidentally left a bus' lights on overnight, he said, and by morning, the battery had died. The system, however, will send a voltage shortage alert to cell phones of transportation staff if that situation occurs again.
The GPS-tracking system has been ordered, and Stillian said school staff plan to have everything in place by early October.
"Our focus right now is to get the school year started," he said.
©2016 The Garden City Telegram (Garden City, Kan.), distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
