The Hillsborough County School district unveiled and provided the parents of their students with a new cell phone app last Monday that enables parents to track the location of their kid's buses.
An estimated 90,000 students in Hillsborough County schools ride the bus. Thus, parents cannot help but feel grateful that the school has provided them with a tool to be able to look into the current destination of their kids' buses, to know when the bus has left the school and when it will arrive, and see that they are well and safe.
The new app is called "Here Comes The Bus." Parents need to sign up to utilize the app by using their kid's student identification number. Once signed up, the app can now send alerts as to when the bus leaves school and when it is within a designated radius of the student's home, Fox News reported.
All for safety
Hillsborough Superintendent Addison Davis expressed that the new app is all about safety and making it more convenient for their student's parents. It is ultimately taking care of their students along the way.
He further explained that the app allows both school and parents to identify when the student gets on and off the bus, creating a "geofence" that will enable parents to estimate the distance of the bus from their house. With this, students would not have to sit and wait for long periods at the bus stop, putting their safety at risk, especially since there are current bus schedule delays due to a shortage of bus drivers.
The student riding the bus will have to scan a "ridership ID card" when they get on and off the bus. This will allow their parents to see the location of the bus on the app.
Greg Ross-Munro, Tampa tech expert, detailed the process to ABC Action News, "Within that process of getting on and off the bus is an internet-enabled device that speaks to a server in the cloud somewhere, and it says that this ID number just checked in on the bus and then the bus has a GPS tracker on it, which then a parent can follow."
Data privacy issues from parents
Months before the app was released, a town hall meeting was held for all school management and parents of Hillsborough County Public Schools. One of the concerns parents raised is about the RFID chip technology being used for the app and the risks it entails to data privacy.
Josephine Amato, one of the parents, expressed that they had valid questions regarding the data collection process and its safety. Yet, she felt like the district officials are being submissive, unsatisfactorily addressing their concerns.
However, Davis assured us that the school could not track the students. Their goal is to create a safety mechanism and identify ridership.
According to the Osprey Observer, Hillsborough County is not the first school district in Florida to use and offer the app. The Leon, Marion, Martin, Orange, Osceola, Pasco, Sumner, and St. Lucie school districts are already utilizing the said app to deal with the bus delays and bus driver shortages that have caused frustration to the parents.
