Stopfinder, a GPS tracking system that will be used by Mars Area School District, will allow parents to track the location of their child's school bus in real time once it's implemented.

Parents soon will have no need to guess whether the bus is late, early or on its way to drop off or pick up their children in Mars Area School District.

The Mars Area School Board voted last month to approve a new GPS tracking system called Stopfinder that will allow parents to track the location of their child's school bus in real time.

Transportation director Christina Smith said the project is in its “infancy stages,” having just been approved officially, and hopes that parents will be able to use the app sometime during the second half of the school year.

“I think it alleviates the (worry) parents would have in knowing whether their bus is coming, or has arrived, or is delayed, especially in inclement weather,” Smith said. “With the (Route) 228 project going to be occurring for the next two years, I'm sure that's going to cause bus delays. I think it can alleviate some parent anxiety over those things.”

Debbie Brandstetter, the district's business manager, explained the program at the Nov. 9 school board meeting.“We spent a lot of time in the transportation department researching options for an app for their parents to use to see where their student's bus is,” Brandstetter said. “It's a two-part system. We have to have GPS on the bus, so they can use the parent app to see where the buses are.”The second component of the system is the Stopfinder app itself, which is managed through Transfinder, the company already used by Mars Area School District to plan routes for buses.“With that app, parents will know real-time where their child's bus is,” Brandstetter said at the meeting. “It's not the child, it's the bus, and the app works with the GPS of the bus.”The agenda items approved at the Nov. 9 meeting detailed a license and hardware fee of “$14,113 plus additional licenses as needed at an annual cost of $252 each” for the GPS hardware to be installed in the buses, and “an annual cost of $5,376 plus additional licenses as needed at an annual cost of $96 each” for the Stopfinder App software itself.

The main hurdle to implementing the now-approved system, Smith said, is that the GPS hardware devices to be installed have not arrived at the district due to shipping delays.“We have to get the GPS installed in the buses before we can go forward, and we only have three now that we've been using on a 30-day trial period,” Smith said. “We don't have them installed yet in the buses.”To access the app, parents will be sent individual invitations by email, she said, that are attached to their child's student ID number. Through the app, parents will be notified when their child's bus is approaching.“Transportation's not an exact science, and that's why I think the app will be helpful,” she said. “They'll be notified with push notifications and emails. From (what) I understand, they can set up a perimeter around their bus stop, and get a push notification when the bus may arrive. If they set the perimeter to when the bus is five minutes away from the stop, they'll get a push notification to know if the bus is crossing that threshold.”The district has purchased the Stopfinder software, but will need to run a training and on-boarding process for employees before the program can fully roll out. After that, the district plans to get small-group tests up and running in January 2022.“It will be a very small group, utilizing all of our schools, so that we can work out the kinks and bugs and make sure that when we actually roll out to the entire district, we'll have a good sense of how it works and that we've problem-solved prior to getting it out to everyone,” Smith said.

Children get on the bus at Mars Area School District.

Children get on the bus at Mars Area School District. Julia Maruca/Butler Eagle