With the goal of making two-way radio communication for school bus drivers more effective, the Hall County School Board has voted to spend nearly $185,000 on new digital radio equipment for all county school buses.
Clay Hobbs, Transportation Director for the Hall County School District, approached board members at their Monday night work session to request the funding, noting that the current analog equipment now in use is inadequate.
Hobbs said with the current equipment - and with antennas located on towers on Wauka Mountain and Skitts Mountain on the north end of the county - two-way radio coverage is somewhere between 80 and 85 percent.
"[The analog equipment] is kind of akin to a rotary phone versus a cell phone," Hobbs said. "One person can talk and then another person can talk and drown that person out and take over. You hear crackling, you hear interference on the signal as people speak. As you get further out [from the antennas], the signal gets weaker and weaker."
With the digital equipment, school bus drivers will be able to communicate clearly across most of the county.
"The digital system is as clear as a bell until you're completely out of range," Hobbs said. "Typically, with a digital system you pick up around 15-percent coverage."
Hobbs said even if a driver travels into a "hole" where communication is stopped, that would be very brief.
The plan is to remove the current antenna from Skitts Mountain and install another on top of the Davis Middle School gym to give more efficient coverage on all sides of the county.
"Bus drivers will no longer have to worry about breaking down in an area where they don't have communication with our office," Hobbs said.
He said other situations arise where a parent may need to get information to a child on a school bus, so it's necessary that the transportation office be able to communicate with drivers at all times.
The money for the new equipment will come from a state school safety fund approved in the 2018 Georgia legislative session.
Hobbs said all 340 school buses will get the new two-way digital equipment; units will also be installed in the transportation offices and in administrative vehicles.
The plan currently calls for the equipment to be installed during the Christmas holiday break in December.
