Upgrades to Gilmer’s transportation department are on the way.
At Monday’s Gilmer County Board of Education work session, it was announced that the district is in the process of implementing new routing software and adding fleet global positioning systems to its buses and maintenance vehicles.
“What this will enable us to do, with our routing software, is become more efficient,” said Dana Berry, director of human resources and facilities. “(Transportation director) Samantha Amos is handling all of the work out there at transportation and is doing an amazing job. She has it all in her head, on spreadsheets and on maps and we’re converting that.
“We’ve done this some in the past with routing software, but the difference this time around is we included implementation, follow-up and training as part of this.”
Parents will soon have the ability to know where their child is before and after school. Through an application called “Where’s the Bus,” they can receive notifications when buses are approaching and when they arrive at stops.
The software will also provide information such as which students are on buses at any point during the route. Tablets will be provided on buses with directions for substitute drivers when needed.
“Field trip software will also be part of this,” Berry said. “It will be a heck of a lot easier to manage trips outside of the county. That field trip software will know where all of our buses and kids are at all times.”
Berry noted that through this process, they will be able to eliminate five buses and one to two maintenance vehicles from their fleet.
“That will impact us on insurance, operating costs, maintenance, etc.,” he said.
The software will be able provide information with regard to how much each bus costs the district to operate. The information can be broken down as to how much each bus costs per mile.
“The ones that are costing us too much money or have outlived their shelf life, we’ll be able to identify those and save the tax payers and the school board money,” Berry said.
“This was a very exhaustive precess. I think we looked at half a dozen different software programs.”
If a bus suffers a mechanical failure on the route, the transportation department will know in real time.
Berry said “there is still a lot of work to do” to get the system up and running. He plans on providing a demonstration to the board once everything is installed.
“I have worked with a couple different bus softwares,” superintendent Dr. Brian Ridley said. “It can be very helpful. It was an exhaustive process because some of the software and products are better for urban systems and some are better for rural systems and some are extremely complicated.
“The thing I’m most excited about is that it seems to have a full suite of fleet management tools. We’re moving into the modern age as far as managing our fleet and saving a lot of money.”