Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Spring ISD tests bus tracking system

From: Marcelrf <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 28 Feb 2004 06:23:52 -0500

Feb. 27, 2004, 10:18PM

Spring ISD tests bus tracking system

By JASON SPENCER
Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle

For five minutes last fall, a 5-year-old Bammel Elementary School
student was lost after boarding the wrong bus. Authorities found
the boy safe in another neighborhood, but the scare got the Spring
school district's transportation director thinking.

Now, a few months after Brian Weisinger took his idea to Nextel
Communications, Bammel administrators are able to track their
students by computer from the time they get on the bus until they
get off.

"That's where Big Brother stops," Weisinger said.

Each time students pass through the bus doors, they scan a
bar-coded identification tag through a satellite-linked device
mounted on the dashboard. Software designed for the district by
Philadelphia-based AirClic uses global positioning satellite
technology to track the bus. The system is still experimental and is
being used on only two buses.

Officials with Nextel say they are aware of no other school in the
country with the technology.

If the district decides to buy it, the system could be used for other
tasks. Classroom doorways could be fitted with scanners to monitor
students the same way EZ Tag scanners track cars on toll roads.
That could free teachers from taking attendance.

"If you can put a bar code on it, you can track it," said Jeffrey
Mitchell, a Nextel data account executive working on the project.

The school can then access a Web site that assigns a number to
each student, keeping names, Social Security numbers and other
identifying information away from anyone who might hack into the
system, Mitchell said.

Nextel dealer Western Talk expects to make its sales pitch to the
school district next month.

After her experience with the missing 5-year-old, Bammel Principal
Linda Kenjura said she thinks the tracking system is a good
investment, although she doesn't yet know the cost.

"Finding one missing child would make it worth it," she said.

Weisinger hopes to expand the system to include all of Spring's 198
buses, which carry 19,500 students daily. Eventually, Weisinger
said, parents would have access to a secure Web site to monitor
their children's whereabouts.

"That would eliminate some of the phone calls the principal and I
receive," Weisinger said. "You can imagine how many calls we get
from parents who forgot their kid was going to Cub Scouts or a
friend's house."

The system has its limits. Young children tend to lose things, and
older students could fool the system by having a friend carry their
ID badge. And the bar codes have to be readable at all times.

"One child covered hers with stickers, and I had to get her to
uncover it," Kenjura said.

Fifth-grader Amanda Plummer, 10, said the badge dangling from
her neck makes her feel cool.

"In middle school they wear them, and it makes me feel a little
older," she said.

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/2424513
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