A ‘game changer’ for Wake parents: How the school system is updating bus notifications
.JPG "A school bus arrives at Winchester Drive and Paula Ann Court in Raleigh en route to Pleasant Grove Elementary School on the first day of school on Aug. 28, 2023.")
Changes are coming to provide Wake County families with faster and more accurate information about school bus delays.
The Wake County school system is rolling out a new notification system on its website that will provide close to real-time updates on bus delays and send automated alerts to families. Wake will pilot the system at a few schools with the goal of rolling it out districtwide on July 1.
Details about the new system were presented at the Wake County school board facilities committee meeting.
“It’s a game changer,” Shashi Buddula, Wake’s chief technology officer, told board members. “What it does for the parents and students is pretty significant.”
The update comes at a time when parents have grown frustrated by school buses being delayed or not coming at all because of Wake’s shortage of bus drivers.
The current system is limited
Wake families currently have two ways to find out about the status of their child’s bus.
Parents can use the Here Comes The Bus app that uses GPS trackers to give them the location of buses. But the system doesn’t always work if a different bus has to be used for the route.
Parents can also go online to https://www.wcpss.net/Page/177 to the district’s bus updates page to see if a delay has been reported. But Buddula said the system is not set up for timely notifications or to send notifications to families.
Targeted notifications coming
Buddula said the new system will allow transportation staff to directly enter delays into a web application that will trigger notifications to parents via emails and text messages.
“You are notified by multiple ways, so on a cold morning and you get a text saying the bus is running 15 minutes late, you can tell your child to wait for 15 minutes and then go,” Buddula said.
The notifications will be near real time, according to Jeff Alford, Wake’s senior director of technology.
Families will need to opt in to receive messages from the school as well as keep their contact information current.
“This helps with peace of mind for parents,” said board member Lindsay Mahaffey. “I appreciate the fact that this is getting put out there.”
Designed for mobile devices
Another feature of the new system is that Wake says it’s designed to work on mobile devices.
“We walk around with our phones,” Alford told the board. “This is where you want to get the information. Targeted information really shifts the perspective of this and the concept of this and gets it right to the person when it’s needed.”
The system won’t replace Here Comes the Bus. That will still be used to provide GPS tracking information on buses.
Parents will be notified if the bus is running 20 minutes or more late. Board members asked staff to consider using different time increments for notifications.
For now, the new system will be piloted at Herbert Akins Road Elementary School in Fuquay-Varina and Swift Creek Elementary School in Raleigh. But more schools could be added to the pilot.
Bob Snidemiller, Wake’s senior director for transportation, said he expects changes will be made based on feedback from parents.
This story was originally published February 23, 2024 at 10:53 AM with the headline "A ‘game changer’ for Wake parents: How the school system is updating bus notifications."
