New system will allow better tracking of La Grande students on buses
LA GRANDE — La Grande students who take the bus to school may sometime in the next 12 months need a little extra time before boarding and departing.
Students who ride buses to school will be issued identification cards that will be scanned or code numbers. If riders are issued cards, a scanner will pick up the signal and log them in and out. If the students are instead provided a code, they will type it in on a computer when getting on and off their bus, allowing it to record where and when they entered or left.
Combined with GPS, the system will then transmit the location data to a remote server that staff with the La Grande School District and Mid Columbia Bus Co., which provides transportation service for the La Grande School District, can access.
La Grande Superintendent George Mendoza said once in place, the system will allow his school district and Mid Columbia to know precisely where every student who is riding a bus is at any moment.
“It is great to be able to use state-of-the-art technology to boost security and monitor our students," he said.
Austin Tibbetts, location manager for Mid Columbia Bus Co.'s Grande Ronde Transportation District, said the system could be in place sometime during the 2024-25 school year. He said it will be designed to enhance child safety and should provide peace of mind for parents if their children aren’t on the bus they expect them on.
Tibbetts said parents will have a smartphone app they will be able to use to see what bus their child is on. This means concerned parents will be spending less time calling the school district or Mid Columbia trying to find out where the bus their children are on is.
Mendoza believes the school district will end up assigning students a short code they would type in when boarding or departing buses. He believes a code system would be better than one relying on cards.
“The problem with a card system is that some students might forget their cards," he said.
It is not yet known what the new system will cost. The cost will be reduced because the school district will likely use Synergy software it already is using to operate the system, according to Casey Hampton, of the La Grande School District.
The move to a tracking system will have an impact on nearly one-third of La Grande’s students, Mendoza said, since about 600 of La Grande’s students ride the bus to school.
New streaming system now operating
The tracking system will complement a new real time video surveillance system now in all of the Mid Columbia buses La Grande students ride on.
The cameras were installed in late March over spring break and provide steaming images of the interior of the buses. The live images can be viewed at any time by MidCo or La Grande School District officials with the aid of the Wi-Fi systems in the buses. Wi-Fi was installed in all of the buses used by the La Grande School District a year ago.
Tibbetts said the new system is making it much easier to respond quickly when a parent calls to ask what bus their child is on. He explained that all he has to do is look at the live images of buses to find the student a parent is calling about.
