ROCK SPRINGS — With several schools closing and a brand new four-day school week on the horizon, Sweetwater County School District No. 1 is preparing to meet the transportation challenges for its students in the fall.
District Transportation Director Joe Clingenpeel told the Board of Trustees Monday night that families can expect to see some changes in bus transportation during the 2021-2022 school year.
Clingenpeel said his staff’s biggest challenge will be in the morning because every school in the district starts at the same time and his drivers won’t be able to “tier” the routes. The afternoon routes will “pretty much look like our p.m. routes always have,” he said.
New Tech Efficiency
The District recently purchased a new bus routing program called School Bus Manager that will help Clingenpeel and his staff provide transportation “as efficiently as it possible can.”
The Transportation Department recently put out an information request form to all families with the help of the Information and Technology department. Clingenpeel said the request form will help the district gage how many students will need transportation in the morning, as well as giving the district names to start putting into the new program.
“This will help us start building our bus routes as fast as we can,” he said.
Clingenpeel added that School Bus Manager also allows the district to sync the program to Powerschool so any updates in Powerschool will simultaneously update in School Bus Manager as well.
School Bus Manager allows us to build routes from scratch. We can also build activities trips that will give our drivers directions on how to get there.
SCSD No. 1 Transportation Director Joe Clingenpeel
The program also gives drivers turn-by-turn and stop-by-stop directions on every route allowing a substitute drivers to step in and not skip a beat. School Bus Manager gives parents an application they can access to few accurate stop times and know whether the bus is running late.
“It’s web-based so there’s no installation,” Clingenpeel said. “When they update it, we get the immediate update right away. The program is powered by Google and cloud based, so it’s always up to date.”
Other features include re-routing directions in case roads are closed, route overviews, student attendance and real-time bus locations so parents can know if, when and where their student got on and off the bus. Parents can also activate arrival alerts so they know when their child’s bus reaches it designated stop.
Clingenpeel told the board that School Bus Manager cost $19,744 which was “significantly less expensive than some of the other ones.” He said drivers can use tablets for GPS purposes in the program where others required the district to purchase their GPS.
New changes to the District bus routes will be presented to the board at its June 14 meeting and the public will have an opportunity to comment on the plan.
