The Hall County School System is exploring options to improve their school bus transportation system at Monday's school board meeting.
Hall County has been using the routing software Versatrans to coordinate and communicate bus route information as well as to keep up with what driver is picking up on what road, when they are picking up and when they are dropping off since 1998.
Tyler Technologies, the company that owns and operates Versatrans, recently came out with a device called Tyler Drive.
Tyler Drive is a small touchscreen tablet computer that is mounted in the driver compartment and communicates pertinent information to the driver, parents and district administration.
For parents, it will allow them to know where their child's bus is at all times. The device supports a smartphone app called 'My Stop'. Each child will be given an ID number and parents can login to the app to view the route location of the bus.
"You have to login and it's safe so only parents can access that information," Hall County School Superintendent Will Schofield said. "Tremendous solution if it does the things we've been told it can do."
It is also a more proactive approach to alerting parents if they child's bus will be late for whatever reason, the device will send a notification to the parents.
This will help the drivers, especially substitute drivers, in that it provides route information, where the stops are and also has pictures of the children who are supposed to get on at each stop.
Every school bus is mapped out via GPS, so the school district can view the location of their buses at all times to prevent any unauthorized use.
The upfront cost of each unit is roughly $1,000. It will cost $300 each year after that mainly to pay for the cellular modem and attachment from Verizon.
