The White County Board of Education has voted to implement a service that will allow parents to track school buses at the March 31 meeting. The idea was brought up by the Assistant School Superintendent Scott Justus at a March 29 meeting.
“This app will actually give parents, when they load the app onto their phones, access to be able to track where the bus is that their kid belongs to, because what they’ll do is put the address into that. And so this is just an addition to what we already currently have. But obviously, when you upgrade things there’s a cost.”
The total cost for this project is going to cost $18,748. This upgrade will be funded by SPLOST and money from the schools’ general fund. SPLOST will cover the hardware components that will be installed inside the buses, which will cost $5,060. “Out of ESSER funds it will be it will be $13,388, but there’s are 10 mounts that go in the busses and tablets that will go along with that and that can be covered by SPLOST,” said Justus. The rest will be used to cover the app that will track the busses and the services provided by the company.
The company Justus proposed to use for this service is called Travel Tracker by App-Garden. This app features a mapping algorithm specifically designed for schools to figure out efficient routes for buses.
Parents will know how close the bus will be to the drop-off and pick-up location while using the app. It will be free for parents to download, and they will have to register their child with a code. This will ensure that only parental guardians with children enrolled in the school system will have access to bus information.
Sharon Hipp of the school system transportation department said she could have the system installed within four to six weeks, and it would be up and running when school starts in August. School Superintendent Dr. Laurie Burkett said school officials would give information to parents over the summer through social media about how the app works, so they will know how to utilize it in the new school year.