For many parents the summer is a carefree time when keeping tabs on your kids is as easy as sending them to summer camp, or having them accompany you on a family vacation to a Old West desert mining town where the only danger is boarded up, abandoned mine shafts.
But as the toasty weather (eventually) subsides, the reins of your kids’ safety get handed over from an irresponsible 18-year-old making $500 for the summer to the somewhat less-trusted hands of the public school system. With the transfer, the fear of deranged, candy-pushing derelicts in minivans scoping out the bus stop –before students are shipped off to Barricade Fortress Jr. High– clouds the minds of protective parents everywhere.
One Southwest Chicago school district is doing its part to quell the constant amber alerts being issued in the brains of watchful guardians– with the use of GPS.
The Palos Heights 128 School District is keeping tabs on its bus-riding students with ZPass IDs (provided by Zonar Systems). The labels log passengers into the district’s database every time a student steps on or off the bus. The new process is sure to frighten some people with its big brother potential, but for parents who want to make sure their kids travel safely to and from their local center of learning, the system is a win-win. True, it doesn’t ensure their kids will pay attention and get straight A’s when they get there, but making it to homeroom in one piece is a pretty important piece of that battle.
The program itself is an update of one run by the same district the previous three years, in which all buses (but not the students) had been equipped with the same ZPass technology. It cost the district $16,000 to cover passengers on 10 buses, a small price to pay for the safety of its students. If the initiative proves an overwhelming success, other districts are sure to make room in the budget for the implementation of such a measure.
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