b'Because of more concerns about child safety, the appIf a student named Susie is sick and did not get on the system is being used by more and more districts. bus, the school district gets a report showing she was ALC Schools said its ALC Driver App meets thenot on the bus, said Gregg Prettyman, executive vice companys core objectives of ensuring student safe- president of ALC Schools. If a parent or school district ty, predictability and reliability, efficiency for schoolcalls us, we can tell them if the student did or did not get districts, and reporting transparency. The companyon [the drivers vehicle]. We use the app to track where uses mini-vans that carry one to only a few students atthe students are.a time, when using a school bus proves to be unfeasibleAs a by-product of their disability, students with spe-for school districts. cial needs are usually monitored more closely than their The app provides drivers with the latest student tripgeneral education peers. For example, a teacher may information from the routing and optimization team.greet the bus when it arrives at the school.Student names and addresses, along with trip details, areThe ALC Driver app is written to track the location provided fresh for every trip. Company representativesof individual students. Our app is not an off-the-shelf also said the app provides GPS information about everyGPS tracker for vehicles. It is a full-fledged student pickup and drop-off location to drivers.transportation tracking mechanism, Prettyman added. This, the company added, creates a trail of locationThe combination of our driver app plus MRM equals breadcrumbs via GPS that are provided in real time toan amazingly detailed profile for each students current the dispatch center and to school districts. The exacttrips, past trips and future trips. Our app provides pickup times are recorded, so that drivers arrive at stops, pick upand drop-off times for each student, taking into account students and drop them off at their destination. All datacustom wait times and monitors, plus information re-goes to the ALC Schools live dispatch center and its Mygarding no shows for each individual student.Ride Manager (MRM) tool for districts to access. The ALC App supports the entire student population, 7www.stnonline.com27'