Tracking Students

The 28,000 students who ride the bus in the Brownsville Independent School District will get to school more safely and economically this year, thanks to Global Positioning System transmitters on each of the district’s 290 buses that track their travel with pinpoint accuracy.

The $340,000 GPS system that BISD installed on its bus fleet over the summer is expected to pay for itself in about three years due to more efficient routing and operations, said Hector Chirinos, the district’s transportation administrator.

More importantly, it will make the students who ride the buses safer because BISD can keep better track of them.

“Now we know where the students on a specific bus are at all times,” Chirinos said. “It gives us 10-second, real-time status on the buses — location, speed, direction and stops.”

The information is displayed on a computer screen in the district’s transportation center on Dana Avenue, electronically tracking the buses via transmission towers atop the gymnasiums at Stillman Middle School and Rivera High School. Trapeze School Auto Vehicle Locator software makes it possible to see each individual bus as it travels its route anywhere within BISD boundaries

Actually, the buses show up all the way to Los Fresnos and near Harlingen, but the system lacks maps from those areas to integrate with BISD territory, said Elizabeth Quintana, an administrative supervisor with the transportation department. BISD officials are working with the other districts in hopes of integrating the system.

The system also includes portable GPS units that can be used to track buses that travel outside the district for athletic contests and University Interscholastic League events throughout Texas.

“We’re fortunate to be the first district this side of San Antonio to have GPS installed,” Chirinos said, adding that the district is just getting started on implementing the system.

By late October or early November Chirinos said he hopes to have a proposal ready to present to the BISD board of trustees for a bar code-based system to identify students as they get on the bus, either by swiping a card or a close-range card reader. That way, the district would be able to accurately track every child riding the bus.

“We’re just getting into it,” he said. “It will change the concept of how a transportation department is managed.”

Sandra Valenzuela, who has been a BISD bus driver for six years, said she feels safer knowing her bus has the GPS tracking system on board.

“It’s a good system because it gives us more security,” she said. “It can help us in case of an accident, or a fight between students or with traffic problems.”

Chirinos said the BISD Transportation Department logged more than 2 million miles last year just transporting students to and from school — that doesn’t including field trips, tutorials and school-to-school transportation.

He said the district spends about $40,000 a week on fuel, so there is a significant potential for savings through optimizing routes and minimizing idling time.

BISD spent $340,000 to equip its 290 buses with the GPS system, district officials said. That works out to about $1,172 per bus.

By comparison, installing a GPS system on a personal vehicle costs $695 plus $100 for installation at Cardenas Motors in Brownsville, said George Altimirano, a service advisor at the dealership.

Chirinos said BISD’s GPS system “looks complicated but its simple.”

In addition to keeping track of students, the system also makes it easy to document exactly what happened in the case of an accident or whether a bus was on time to pick up students at a stop.

“At the end of the day, it’s all about student safety,” he said.