NCSD board approves bus GPS system

Upgraded cameras and GPS technology for local school buses, which are anticipated to provide additional security for students while also allowing parents peace of mind through the use of an app, were approved Monday night by the Newton Community School District Board of Education.

The school board voted 6-0 to accept the $91,753 bid for the bus cameras from Hoglund Bus Company, of Monticello, Minn. Other bids included a $108,103offer from the Alabama-based AngelTrax Mobile Video Surveillance Solutions and a $101,694.88 offer from Waterloo-based dealer School Bus Sales Co.

The school board voted unanimously in favor of the six-year, public education agreement between the district and Synovia Solutions to install and maintain a GPS routing program for buses. According to the agreement, 34 school buses will be affected by the change, as will the district’s 34 white fleet vehicles — eight of which will require a “hard-wired unit.” The district as agreed to pay $2,410 per month for the service (not calculating applicable sales tax).

Both items were presented by NCSD Director of Business Services Tim Bloom. NCSD Transportation Supervisor Curt Roorda could not attend Monday night’s school board meeting at the E.J.H. Beard Administration Building, but he had previously briefed members of the agenda items at the March 11 meeting.

As soon as the new GPS equipment is installed, parents and guardians will have the capability of knowing when the school bus will arrive to pick up their children with the company’s Here Comes the Bus App, Roorda told school board members two weeks ago.

“Parents can set this up to where they can get notified within two minutes or up to 30 seconds of when the bus is coming to their house,” he said. “So in the country when it’s cold out, I think it would be very efficient for that. That way when they send their kids out they’re not standing there for five to eight minutes or 10 minutes or whatever.”

The Newton school district’s utilization of the app may address concerns brought up by a citizen at a school board meeting in February. Mitch Montgomery claimed his students were left at a bus stop the first day back to school after numerous cancelations, which he said is a safety concern, the Newton Daily News previously reported.

According to app info provided by Synovia Solutions, Here Comes the Bus allows users to “monitor and mitigate driver behavior, including real-time monitoring” to ensure children are being transported safely to school. The “Child Check” system function communicates to parents when their child or children are still on the bus.

Bloom said, “We can also push out notifications saying your bus is delayed … This will be great and it will work with our current (route software Transfinder). It will work parallel to that, so we can run our routes and then compare them to what we say are routes are supposed to be and then verify that that’s truly happening.”

Conversely, the new cameras would upgrade every school bus to the same system and would connect to the district’s network to perceive the videos sooner. Bloom said each bus will be equipped with six cameras and a stop-arm camera.

“Right now, they’re all on different systems,” Bloom said. “This will effectively put them all on one system and then we can just get the chip from the camera, the recording device. What we’re working toward is having that connect to our internet so we can just get it off the internet and we can pull that data.”

Contact Christopher Braunschweig at 641-792-3121 ext. 6560 or cbraunschweig@newtondailynews.com