Gateway School District won't use ID scanners and tablets to help track students on buses when classes resume in August.
The scanning cards — which students would use with a card reader as they got on and off district buses — were part of a package worth more than $100,000 the district purchased roughly a year ago from Missoula, Mont.-based Education Logistics, or Edulog, that also included a GPS system that would allow school officials and parents to track district buses.
But Superintendent Nina Zetty said that glitches in the tablets issued to drivers and in a software app that would have allowed parents to track buses and in other aspects of the package prompted officials not to move forward with plans to start using the ID-scanning cards districtwide during the 2015-16 school year, which begins Aug. 24.
Pete Salinas, Edulog director of quality assurance, declined to comment.
As part of the package, each bus carries a black box connected to the GPS device that transmits information about the vehicle's location to a central server that school officials can access.
With bus ID scanners, the black box also would track which students were on the bus.
The district will continue to use GPS devices installed on its buses, Superintendent Nina Zetty said.
She said Edulog will reimburse the district $74,000 for the unused scanning service.
Gateway and Student Transportation of America, the company that operates buses for the district will divide the costs for the GPS system — $23,000 in 2015-16.
Zetty said district officials tested the scan cards in the spring on several buses of high-school students.
She said an app for parents — which would have cost parents $3 to $5 a month — is not ready.
An incident while the district was testing the cards in the spring highlighted some of the shortcomings in the system.
Zetty said a Penn Hills student jumped on a Gateway bus at Forbes Road Career and Technology Center, on Beatty Road, and rode it back to Gateway “in the hopes of handling a girlfriend issue,” Zetty said in an email. “If the swipes/tablets had been working, this would not have been able to occur.”
School board member Jim Capell said he thought there were too many unresolved issues with the scanners in time for the 2015-16 school year.
He said young children have difficulty remembering essentials like their lunches and backpacks, and would likely forget or lose their cards.
“It's an issue that has to be worked out. What's the backup plan for that?” said Capell, whose son will be in fifth grade.
Zetty said the district tried attaching the cards to elementary students' backpacks, but it kept the students from scanning their cards while still wearing their backpacks.
Officials also tried having students select their picture from the driver's tablet to sign in and out of the bus, but said the tablets still aren't working.
Zetty said some of the information gleaned by tracking students riding the buses saved the district money.
“The benefit to the district ... was our ability to identify the fact that we had scheduled one too many buses for the mid-day run to Forbes Road,” Zetty said.
She said cutting that bus saved about $1,000 a month in transportation costs.
The district will spend an estimated $4.4 million on transportation this school year.
Gideon Bradshaw is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. He can be reached at 412-871-2369 or gbradshaw@tribweb.com.
