At the start of the 2018-2019 school year, it took hours for school buses to pick up children or drop them off—sometimes drivers asking children for directions. Sometimes, the buses dropped kids in the wrong locations, leading at least one parent to take a GPS tracker meant for the family dog and put it in his kindergartener's bag. Now, just a few weeks before the 2019-2020 academic calendar begins, the Department of Education is promising to help.
The NYC DOE has selected Via, the ride share service, to offer "Via for Schools," which is called a "revolutionary school bus management system for the nation's largest school district," and the "first integrated, automated school bus routing, tracking, and communication platform in the world," according to a press release.
The release explains that the service gives "parents and students the ability to track, in real-time, their bus’ whereabouts and receive frequent and reliable communications in the event of service changes, improving safety and bringing important peace of mind to all users of the system. By utilizing Via’s best-in-class algorithms to optimize school bus routing, the Department of Education will be able to achieve operational efficiencies and reduce transportation costs."
While Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza touted the $36 million dollar, five-year partnership with Via, calling it a "state-of-the-art app," this will actually be the second GPS technology installed on buses. That's because earlier this year, after 130,000 school bus complaints, the City Council passed a bill to install GPS tracking on school buses, after other incidents (like a six-inch November snowstorm) stranded school buses around the city.
According to the Daily News, "Education officials said the duplicate costs couldn’t be avoided because the Via app wasn’t ready in time to meet the council’s Sept. 5 deadline for GPS."
Students will check in by way of tablets on each bus. The DOE and Via shared examples of what the app might look like:
Screenshots of the Via for Schools app
Via's CEO Daniel Ramot touted the benefits of the partnership in an interview with Fast Company. For starters, Via's technology will be an upgrade to the "decade-old" software the DOE is currently using to "manually determine routes" (and there are 9,000 routes for 150,000 students).
The New York City school district will gain access to Via’s algorithm, which will help it optimize the city’s bus routes on a daily basis. The algorithm will help bus drivers be able to respond to conditions like road work, traffic, and rough weather, which can cause delays. And because information will flow through Via’s tech platform, parents and students will be able to track the location of their bus in real time, ask questions, and receive updates through an app.
Most significantly, Ramot says, Via’s algorithm will integrate directly with DOE’s student address database (and students can also log a change of address directly in the app or a web portal). This will enable to buses to adapt to meet needs “pretty much overnight,” Ramot says. “A lot can change day to day, and if you’re trying to do that manually, it’s a huge challenge.” Having student location data—as well as traffic and road closure information—flow through an automated platform should enable it to be more responsive, he adds.
However, it's unclear when Via for Schools will be in place, and it definitely won't be ready for the first day of school, September 5th.
Barbara A. Glassman, Executive Director of INCLUDEnyc, a non-profit that helps support young people with disabilities and their families, said in a statement, "While we look forward to improved communication among parents, schools, bus companies, and the Office of Pupil Transportation (OPT), parents still won't have access to the same information as schools through an app, including the exact location of their child's bus, on the first day of school." According to INCLUDEnyc, they experienced a 44 percent increase in the number of families requesting school bus assistance at the start of last school year.
Trishia Bermudez's six-year-old son Matthew is a special-needs student who has a chromosomal deletion, making him very underweight—which also means he requires a car seat and a bus paraprofessional during his bus ride. For the past three years, a few weeks before school starts, she speaks to the school bus driver about Matthew's requirements, but the first day of school is still bumpy.
While she is hopeful for the new Via app, "I'm still leery," Bermudez admitted. She has specific considerations with which it could help: For instance, Matthew, whose school commute is about an hour, needs to be fed at certain times, but school buses don't allow food, so a late bus can result in other issues at home.
Bermudez was surprised when she read that the DOE tracked special education students previously. "I guess their form of tracking is calling the matron or bus driver," she guessed; whenever she would call to ask where the bus was, no one would be able to tell her immediately. And that lack of communication has been challenging. While Matthew's regular school year bus driver was "phenomenal," when the driver had to go on leave, Bermudez didn't realize there was a new driver, who would be late or wouldn't even show up at times.
"It’s really scary... your kid is entering a new grade and learning new things and you're wondering if they’re going to be okay, stepping into this new classroom. You don’t want to worry about his commute," Bermudez said. "Holding my kid hostage on a bus is not ideal for me."
The DOE has added 30 more staffers to OPT this year. Families can find their child's bus route on the OPT website.
