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District 15 bus-tracking system for parents expected to debut next week

Palatine Township Elementary District 15's new school bus-tracking service for parents is expected to debut next week.

District 15 is completing the necessary computer hardware changes and software downloads as part of a shift from the Here Comes the Bus tracking application to My Stop. Officials said District 15 must train employees on My Stop before it can be offered to parents as an app on mobile devices or on a personal computer.

Transportation director Tom Bramley said there was not enough time to get My Stop running before the new academic year began Aug. 16. He said it's hoped the new system will be live in about seven days.

"We took it to the board fairly late on, near the end of the last school year," Bramley said. "And then, by the time we got approval to go ahead, I got the order out to the new vendor (My Stop). Then there was a time lapse of them ordering the hardware."

Apps such as My Stop and Here Comes the Bus are geared toward providing parents with an estimated time their child's school bus will arrive at a stop. Working off GPS data, the app also can indicate if a bus is running late based on pickup and drop-off times.

Parents must have proper login credentials to access My Stop and cannot track other people's students. It's free for parents to use.

Here Comes the Bus, which District 15 used for three years, didn't attract great numbers of parents to sign up with the district for the mobile device app, Bramley said. Officials learned the tracking system was popular as they prepared to shift to My Stop for 2017-18.

"We had a lot of phone calls at the beginning of the year about when My Stop will start, so there's a lot more parents than we anticipated actually using this system, not as an app on the phone, but logging in on the computer to (track) the bus," Bramley said.

Chief School Business Official Michael Adamczyk said District 15 has a three-year deal with My Stop, which went through a bidding process. The district will pay a total of $185,066 to My Stop.

My Stop is part of Texas-based Tyler Technologies Inc. Tyler provides transportation department software to District 15, which is expected to give My Stop an edge over Here Comes the Bus.

"The advantage is, because it's on the same platform, it's more efficient because we don't have to worry about the interface between one system and the other," Adamczyk said.

District 15 serves about 12,700 students from all or part of Palatine, Rolling Meadows, Hoffman Estates, Inverness, South Barrington, Arlington Heights and Schaumburg.

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