BPS parents will be able to track their students buses using a GPS-based app in the coming school year, Superintendent Mary Skipper said.

“With the start of summer transportation, BPS transportation began our use of Zum … which includes the introduction of GPS navigation tablets on our school buses and the Zum mobile app for BPS parents and guardians,” Skipper said during the School Committee meeting last week. “With this Zum app, we’re committed to improving transparency, reliability and convenience for students and families who use BPS school buses.”

With the new GPS technology and app, Skipper detailed, parents and guardians can “view their students’ bus assignment, track bus rides in real time, receive automated delay notifications and alerts when buses are arriving, and get notified when the student gets on and off the school bus.”

The new tech was rolled out at the start of the summer for buses taking around 3,000 students to extended school year, exam school initiative, special education and other programs, according to the superintendent. By the end of the first week, nearly 90% of the bus drivers were reportedly able to ensure Zum was working to track their routes.

The district aims to ensure “all bus drivers and transportation staff” are trained in the technology before the start of the school year, Skipper said, along with developing a plan to assist parents and guardians in learning how to use the app.

BPS transportation director Dan Rosengard noted there will be a “learning curve” as the buses increase from the 200 in use this summer to 640 in the fall, but the team is preparing for the shift.

The change comes after BPS has made slow progress on many transportation issues in the past year, improving on both staffing for school bus drivers and aides. In a 2022 agreement to avoid a state takeover, the district agreed to improve buses which were chronically late, failed to meet special education needs and had other issues.

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The district was using paper directs for drivers, Rosengard said, noting that some of the past “biggest challenges” were for drivers trying to navigate a route for the first time. The GPS navigation system should help all drivers, but particularly substitute or standby drivers, complete routes with fewer incidents, he added.

The system will also help track ridership data to improve efficiency in the system and track late buses and identify issues in real time.

“We’re still learning with the system and figuring out exactly how we’ll use all this information to improve our operations and our (standing operating procedures) and all that,” Rosengard said, “but it just gives us a lot more real time information that we didn’t have before, so we can switch from a reactive mindset to a proactive mindset.”