What's New in Parent Apps?

Real-Time Bus Tracking With GPS

The return to school means the return to buses. When students have to wait for long periods at a bus stop, parents understandably worry about inclement weather, passing traffic, and their children’s safety.

Keeping parents informed of up-to-the-minute bus locations not only increases convenience, it increases peace of mind.

Two apps are successfully providing these benefits to parents, with added benefits to the districts that offer them:

Traversa Ride 360

Assistant Transportation Director of Marietta City Schools in Georgia, Lance Johnson, implemented an app that shows parents an estimated arrival time for their student’s bus. Right from their phones, parents can open the app and see a map showing, for example, if their student’s bus was delayed due to weather, construction, or other unforeseen events. The app not only provides a new level of transparency, a district-wide goal, it also aids in driver accountability.

District staff likewise benefit from the core Traversa program, as the integrated software shares student routing information with them. This eliminates the need to call transportation in order to find out which bus a student should take or where the student’s stop is assigned.

View this Q&A webinar with Lance Johnson for a deeper dive into the Traversa Ride 360 app and how it improved both communication and safety in his district.

Versatrans My Stop

Synergy between the Versatrans My Stop app and e-Link, an online student transportation portal, allows parents to view their own student’s transportation plan. District administrators can view all student plans and manage any changes. If a student has a variable schedule — going to different parents’ houses on different nights, for example — the integrated systems are flexible enough to reflect that transportation plan. The solutions are customizable so that the district can protect student information and control who has access to what information with user-based security levels.

Because Versatrans allows staff to access data from the GPS devices on the buses, staff can see changes to routing and planning information in real time. This was particularly important to David Kilburn of York County School Division in Virginia, an adopter of the solution, who noted, “The efficiency of access to live data has really changed our operations overall.” His schools also rely heavily on push notifications to alert parents of driver changes, incidents, or delay.

Hear an interview with Kilburn and view a demonstration of the Versatrans My Stop app in this webinar.

The ability to share information about student transportation and bus locations in real time means districts can ensure students are safer. These apps also reduce the amount of time spent in researching and communicating information to parents and teachers.