Apr. 1—Starting next fall, Ector County ISD's buses are expected to have GPS integrated into its routing system making it easier to track the vehicles.
A parent app will also be included to help parents keep track of their child's bus. The goal is to have everything up and running "by the time school starts, or shortly after school starts next year."
Transportation Director Roger Cleere said Synovia is the company the system comes from.
The basic units are on 140 buses and the department buses about 6,000 students. There are a "small handful" of buses that haven't had them installed yet. Cleere said they are currently working to integrate the routing system with the GPS system.
"What that would do is all the routing would be in the system so the bus will know what students are supposed to get on at this stop, what students are supposed to get off at the next stop if it was in the afternoon," Cleere said.
Right now, if someone new comes into the system they have to schedule them and then they send the information to the parents. They also have to give the new information for a new student to the driver and that's all done on paper, which sometimes takes a day or two.
"Once that's up and going, if we schedule a new student today, the system will update during the night and the driver will have the updated information. Even if we had to add a stop or change something on the route that information will be there when the driver logs into the table the next morning," Cleere said.
It will also give substitute drivers directions so they don't have to read a route sheet.
Cleere said the transportation department had been looking at systems like this for quite some time to see what was available.
The transportation department will have an up-to-date timeframe of where the bus is.
"If we have a parent that calls in and says, 'Hey, did you make this stop?' Then we can go back on the history and look and we can say yes, we made that stop at this time and things like that. That's something very simple that can be done with it," Cleere said.
The system will also help do attendance on the bus in the future. He said they aren't to that point yet because they are still trying to put the whole system together.
".. Each student will have a ID card similar to the one I'm wearing. And as they get on the bus they can tap the reader on the bus and then it will tell the driver who all got on the bus at that stop ...," Cleere said.
If a student is not supposed to be on the bus, the system will provide that information, as well.
The GPS system also has a parent app, which will be available next fall.
"What will happen with the parent app is they can see in real time on their application on their phone what time that bus is expected to be at their stop. It's not like they can see just any information about the bus, but all it will tell them is the information that is for their student," Cleere said.
Especially at the beginning of the year, the dispatcher is flooded with calls wondering where and when a bus will get where it's going.
"We're hoping that once this system is fully up and operational, that it will alleviate some of that as well," Cleere added.
Right now, he said, they don't have an efficient way of getting last-minute information out to parents.
"This will help get the communication out there," he said. "Some of it will be on an automated basis like if there was a last-minute bus change. Whenever the driver logs into that other route. It will send a message out to the parent app to let them know that your bus is going to be this bus number this afternoon instead of this bus number. The communication form of it will probably be as advantageous to us as any of the rest of the system because it will give us a good means for communication."
If a bus is running late, Cleere said, they will be able to tell the system to choose the students that are on that bus and send that information out on the parent app just to those parents.
The parent app will be the last component of the system.
"Then once everything else is set up, the parent app will come online. ... The parent will have the ability to set up what you call a geo-fence around their bus stop. So that when the bus passes that geo-fence it would give them a notification to let them know that hey the bus just crossed that line ...," Cleere said.
That will let parents know that the bus is five minutes away, for example.
Asked if this would take some of the workload off the transportation staff, Cleere said they're hoping it will enable them to give out better information to more people.
"... Because again, we have at any given time, there's one person in dispatch trying to man the radio, and man the telephone and it's one phone line coming in. So sometimes it's hard to get through because, like I said, you have one only one person answering. So we're hoping that a lot of their small individual quick questions can be answered by them looking at the parent app to see," Cleere said.
For now, the department is able to track where the buses are with the GPS system. If there are any buses traveling outside of town, the system will show the position of that vehicle, he said.
The district has an initial lease agreement for five years. The cost is $72,000 a year for sales and equipment.
"We're not bound to that five years. If we changed our mind in three years and said, Okay, this is not what we want to do. Then we have the option ... we can get out of that. It's not like it's a lease to purchase that you're going do this for this period of time, no matter what. We have the option that if we need to, we can say hey, you can have all your equipment back," Cleere said.
He added that the company will support the equipment for that time period and update the software. If something goes wrong, the district can put in a work order and the company will determine if it can be repaired or needs to be replaced.
Superintendent Scott Muri said the new GPS system will be helpful to ECISD as a system and it will allow more efficient communication between people in transportation and parents.
"It allows our transportation to more closely monitor where our buses are traveling and if there are any issues or situations that need to be addressed. But ultimately in a pretty short period of time, it's going to help moms and dads know when that bus will arrive at that child's bus stop so our kids aren't waiting for long periods of time for the bus. They're going to know when the bus will arrive at the bus stop and that will certainly help kids, especially on a cold day, they can stay inside a little longer as they monitor the arrival of that bus at a bus stop," Muri said.
Cleere is retiring and his last day will be June 30.
He became transportation director in spring of 2016, but has worked in the department for nearly 29 years.
Cleere has worked his way up from working part time in the parts room and part time as a mechanic to full-time mechanic, lead mechanic and shop foreman.
He has driven a bus off and on throughout the years.
"... If we were short handed we had to drive a bus from time to time. Now our mechanics don't have to do that because we figured out that we need them back there making sure they're ready to go," Cleere said.
