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On the eve of a new school year, Woodstock School District 200 became the latest McHenry County school district to offer families a bus app.
The District 200 board voted Tuesday night on a contract with Tyler Technologies for GPS monitoring and “system upgrades.” It also will enable parents to track a school bus’ location through an app. The district is paying about $135,000 for it.
“This will provide complete transparency of the location of our buses for all parents,” according to district documents.
Before the vote Tuesday, Superintendent Michael Moan said he was “really excited about this.” He said officials had wanted the bus-tracking app to be ready for this school year but “couldn’t get it done.” It’s not clear when District 200 parents will be able to start using the app to track their children’s buses.
Moan said he thinks it will “help our communication transparency issues tremendously.”
District officials said the system also will give them engine diagnostic information that will improve preventive maintenance on the fleet and make routing more efficient.
Dustin Krueger, a District 200 parent whose son Kaine started kindergarten at the Verda Dierzen Early Learning Center on Wednesday, said he thought he would use the app. Kaine isn’t taking the bus this year but will next year when he attends Westwood Elementary, Krueger said.
“It makes sense,” Krueger said of the app.
Nearby Huntley School District 158 offers families the VersaTrans My Stop app to track school buses. The app, developed by Tyler Technologies, is available for download on the App Store and Google Play and shows families a bus’ location, its estimated time of arrival and any possible delays along the route. Instructions for setting up the bus-tracking app can be found at huntley158.org/departments/transportation.
McHenry School District 15 and High School District 156, which share a transportation office, use the same app as District 158. District 15 offers instructions to use the app on its website, noting the app will show pickup and drop-off times and the route the bus is supposed to take. The district said that should reduce the number of calls it gets about buses’ locations. More information on McHenry schools’ app can be found at d15.org/Page/1210.
Cary School District 26 offers parents and guardians Edulog’s app to track buses in the district. The district has an FAQ page about the app that answers questions ranging from language options in the app to why the app might not show locations on evenings or weekends. More information for Cary parents can be found at cary26.org.
In addition to school buses, public transportation in the Chicago area also features a way for users to track the location of buses and trains. Metra has rolled out metratracker.com, which gives people a way to see where trains are on the train line. The Chicago Transit Authority also has similar technology for buses and trains, according to its website.