Yes I think it is a good Idea,Just Last night I got an e-mail about a 4 yr old that was aducted in april, while on vacation.
With GPS Technology they would have her back by now.and with a chils left on a bus they would know in a instant where they are.
WNL

I suppose GPS would be a good way to track
your child; especially your teenager with
a new driver's license. However, for small
children, there should be safeguards and policies
for keeping track of children on buses.
In the case of the child being dropped off at
home instead of the babysitter's, a note from
the parent attached to the bus's dash with a
magnet would have alerted the driver. Many times
parents will verbally run through a whole
itinerary for their child while I'm stopped
loading or unloading. They seem to think that
theirs is the only child on my bus.
I ask for a written note. Many parents will
comply, but many don't take the time to do
this. Then is it the bus driver's fault if
the child's schedule isn't followed or is it
the parent's?

I think we can take technology too far...or use it just for technology sake.

It is important to safeguard our children. But spending the money to do so seems foolish. I know that people will say, if it saves one child it is worth it. I agree that we cannot place a price on the value of a child, but we already have schools complaining about lack of funds for TEACHING, so why spend more money on tracking students rather than spending it on TEACHING them...

God help us all if we need to rely on GPS systems to locate our kids on the school bus!! We transport approximately 38,000 students each day. They are pretty easy to find. The real benefit for us would be to track distances, mileage, bus whereabouts,pick-up and drop-off times, etc. We will be studying the potential this year. But, to find your kids for the 45 minutes they are on a bus--I think we're going too far!

Children being put on the wrong bus and getting off at the wrong stops are problems that are faced by any bus contractor and especially when a sub driver is being utilized. Having said that,I don't think that the problem is any worse now than 26 years ago when I became a contractor. However I would gladly purchase a GPS system for every middle school that my buses serve so that they could attach it to the bus referrals ( pupil behavior reports ) and monitor their timely action taken and also prevent their loss by school administrators. Oh well, another use for a GPS.

I wouldn't have had a problem tracking my son when he was that age. However, I don't think it's a good idea to give a child a cell phone until maybe high school age. I like the idea of putting a GPS in something else that the kid wears. Kids all the time leave their cells on the bus and these are high school students. The lower grades are worse about leaving things behind. A bad person with bad intentions would get rid of everything the child had including a cell phone and then what good is it.

A parent needs to make the child ride the bus to and from school during the first week or so of school and not take them. That way they will know the bus, bus driver and route. So many parents take them and after a week or so the put them on the bus. The child is confused along with everyone else and that is when mistakes happen. Make sure they have your address to where they need to go penned on them. Let the school, the teacher and bus driver know what bus they should ride. Parents really needs to be at the stop in the AM & PM to send off and collect their child.

When drivers learn what student goes with which parents there is rearly a problem. They also should talk with their student to make sure they don't go over to friend's houses or walk home because they want too.

GPS on school bus isn't going to help when a child is on the wrong bus or gets dropped at the wrong location...while I too don't agree with technology for the sake of technology, with the crazy world we live in I'm not so sure having our kids trackable isn't such a bad idea. Even crazier yet--they should probably get "chipped" at birth like a puppy. Then it's there for the parents that want to use it or subscribe to a service. Crazy it seems--but it would probably help find a lot of missing children out there...

Just to be picky about a technical aspect of this discussion: unless there is some new tech breakthrough that I'm not aware of the GPS system cannot connect to a receiver or transmitter that is enclosed within a steel body. Therefore, if a child were left behind on a bus and was inside it the GPS system would not be able to locate that child.

I would seriously consider embedding the device in my grandchildren's shoes without their knowledge. That way I would not be transfering my fears to them and I would feel much better about their outdoor activities.

Sally,

I didn't mention the idea of implanting a tracking chip under a child's skin, but I was thinking about it. It wouldn't be foolproof, but it would be a more trustworthy tracking system than a cell phone or a pair of sneakers.

Having said that, I don't support the concept. At what point do children become "property," like an automobile equipped with a LoJack system, and stop being, well, children?

At the same time, if one of my kids was abducted, I'd sure want a way to find him.

The more technology we use, the less responsible the students become for themselves. Did the student that was put on the wrong bus protest at any point or go willing to the *wrong* bus? If I have a child that was sent to the wrong bus, usually the child tells me. I then can call dispatch to call school and find out for sure. Granted we only have 10 buses running for this school district. On a small scale this works great. If they are on the wrong bus at some point we can meet the right bus and all is well. Do we want to raise responsible children, or a group of la-dee-da GPS users. New Technology is great when used in moderation, like everything else.

Steve,

As you know from reading my blog, I'll soon be a new parent for the first time at the age of almost 50! Having been an uncle 19 times over and also having been in this crazy business we refer to as "school transportation" for even longer, I've seen alot of things out there that really concern me as a first time parent!

As much as I dislike the idea of thinkiing of our kids as "property" and tracking them constantly, the thought of my child being lost or worse yet, abducted, just scares the heck out of me! So having a GPS chip embedded in her shoes, watch, or even under her skin doesn't seem like a terribly bad idea. Considering the type of world we live in today, it might even be a great idea!

And who says we have to track them all the time? We would only need to "turn on the tracker" under emergency situations ..... so I guess it's more the ability to track rather than the tracking itself that I find as an interesting concept.

When are we going to stop living in fear? As a driver, I am constantly amazed by the capabilities of children. Let them know what's going on, ( i.e. give them some responsibility) and it will be done. I have done numerous "double runs" . Once the kids were told what bus they were to ride -- they did not have a problem --- Not necessarily so with the teachers or administrators......bottom line....PARENTS - communicate with your children AND your bus driver.....

I wish that we didn't have to utilize such technology. However,one only need watch the Evening News,to realize that we do not live in "Mayberry" anymore.I would rather be accused of overprotecting my live child, than to spend the rest of my life questioning,"What If?",in the case of a tragedy.In high volume school districts there will be mistakes made as long as people are human. GPS could help to keep a simple mistake just that,perhaps averting a tragedy that would haunt the carrier as well as the family.

our school system requires a note signed by a parent and ok'd through the school office for a student to get off at a different stop. This includes riding on a different bus. Once you learn your students and watch as they load you should recognize someone that shouldn't be on your bus. We are given a notice of a new rider also.

Having grown up at a time when the Internet, cell phones, GPS devices, Blackberries, PDAs and iPods were unheard of and even seat belts in cars were a novelty, I tend to think some of today's technology is a bit over the top. The case of a student getting on the wrong bus and/or being left at the wrong stop supports my belief that it is important to establish good relations with your students early on so you know where they are going or if someone's on the bus that doesn't belong with you. There are no students on my bus that wouldn't come to me immediately if they had a problem like that of the 7-year-old girl who was the subject of the Baltimore Sun article. I agree with Steve in that I have my doubts as to just how much monitoring we should subject children to. Regardless of how much or how little tracking technology a child has attached to him or her in whatever form, I'll continue to establish good communications with them to avoid as many mishaps as possible. That being said, ultimately, the decision will be that of the parents depending upon how important it is to them to monitor their children's whereabouts and activities any given time.

Geoff Bridgman, Driver
Pocono Mountain School District
Swiftwater, PA

A note to the bus driver and to the teacher is the easiest way to know the stop your child will need. It is so simple and yet parents do not take the time to do it. Also parents do not know the childs bus number ,or have any idea what the driver looks like or know her name, also there may be three or four children at a stop and not one parent,take turn and have one parent there and rotate so at least one adult will be there morning and afternoon.

Working for a large school district, it is not uncommon for kids to get on the wrong bus. The one mentioned in the story was on the right bus, it was just the wrong day. with kids now a days having several drop off points it can lead to a lot of confussion.
Going between Mom and Dads house and the baby sitter or day care on different days of the week makes it hard on bus drivers. The child maybe assigned to 3 different buses. I know some schools don't allow this, but many do. It then becomes the bus driver/schools responsibility to know the childs schedule every day. Add in substitute drivers, teachers, secretaries or a change in the childs schedule for a day, you get the idea. It is a lot to keep track of when you are transporting 8,000 students.
With all that said, I still have faith in our childs school bus driver to get them home safely. What if the child forgets their watch or wears the wrong pair of shoes?

This afternoon when I got to the last stop on my elementary run for summer school, no one was waiting for the second grader I had on board. Her father puts her on the bus in the AM and her older brother meets her there in the afternoon. We're required to have a parent or guardian meet children only in Kindergarten, but I wasn't comfortable letting her off the bus unattended even though it's a nice neighborhood. She's very small and looks more like a pre-schooler than a second grader. I asked her to show me where her house was then drove several blocks down the road, dropped her off and watched until she went inside. Then I knew she was home safely. It gets back to what I've said before about getting to know your students and their habits. Practice random acts of kindness whenever possible. It helps to keep them safe.

Geoff Bridgman, Driver
Pocono Mountain School District
Swiftwater, PA

I have been a school bus driver for nearly 30 years. More and more of the time it seems that the bus driver is being expected to know the child's schedule, and more and more the child's schedule is becoming more difficult. As Todd wrote, above, parents are separated, so the child(ren) go to one parent's home one day and another the next. Brothers and sisters do not even share the same parents, compounding the problem. Frequently parents do not communicate with each other about who is going to pick their child up at the end of the day. While I do not like the idea of GPS for tracking individual students, I think that parents in these situations might find it useful. My biggest concern in this regard is, "Will this become another excuse for the parents to not communicate with the bus driver, instead assuming that because they know where their child is there is no need to write a note to the bus driver when a change in their routine is to occur? Will the bus driver then be held responsible for something that he or she was not informed about?"
No amount of technology can ever replace personal communication and good old fashioned common sense.

Oy vey. Sometimes the media's positioning can really twist things. It seems any time I see the phrase "school bus" in print or hear it on television, I cringe.

If a parent wants to invest in GPS technology to stalk... er... track their children, then it's going to happen. That is life.

Frankly, I'd be concerned about GPS as a 'parenting tool.' It would be far too easy for someone to sit at home and monitor their child's whereabouts without actually 'parenting,' but that is an altogether different topic.

To install GPS technology on every bus in someone's fleet could be quite cost-prohibitive for cash-strapped districts, but I do believe it will become more commonplace as our industry moves forward.

From a managerial standpoint, from a security standpoint and from a common sense standpoint I would sleep better knowing I could tell you precisely where each one of my buses were at any given time.

It will take me a little longer to warm up to sticking an RFID tag in a child's shoe.

What is the ping rate for a Nike these days anyhow...?

I agree with Sally and Max. GPS tracking for emergency use only and it needs to be under the child’s skin so that it cannot be detected and removed by an abductor. As for every day use, it would just be another crutch to allow people to be lazy and irresponsible. Communication between the Parents, Children, Teachers, and other School Officials is the key to proper school transportation.