East Coast Diversified Corp (fka ECDC)

[nycrew]

12/15/2014 article about StudentConnect in Orange County California- Program to track when students get on, off bus:

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/school-645268-district-studentconnect.html - 12/15/2014

Parents in the Orange Unified School District will soon be able to get alerts when their children step on and off the school bus.
The school board recently approved an agreement with StudentConnect, which will allow district staffers and parents to know the status of children who take the bus to and from school.
“The concern of safety is paramount to all of us,” John Ortega, school board president, said.
StudentConnect uses GPS, radio frequency identification and wireless technology to track when kids get on and off the bus. The company currently operates in Kentucky, Georgia, South Carolina, Texas and Louisiana, and is trying to make inroads in California.
“They sought out Orange Unified School District since we are well known in the transportation industry as a stellar department,” said Pamela McDonald, the district’s director of transportation.
When the program starts, students will get new bus passes embedded with RFID chips. Buses will be equipped with RFID readers and GPS systems. When kids step on and off the bus, the information will be sent to the district’s transportation dispatch office.
It’s up to the district how long the data will be stored. No decisions have been made as to how long that will be, McDonald said.
Parents can also choose to receive alerts about their own child. The alerts would come either via text messages or an app that parents can download on their phones. The updates would also include a sponsored message, as StudentConnect is funded through advertising.
The advertising also means StudentConnect does not charge for its services or to install necessary equipment. Orange Unified’s agreement with StudentConnect will go through the 2020-21 school year, though there would be no cost to end earlier.
The district will start by equipping about six to eight of its buses, McDonald said.
“We’ll try it out for a while,” McDonald said, “see if it works well and kind of add buses as we go.”

Best of luck to all,
NYCrew

ECDC