Morehouse Parish School District in Louisiana and School District Two of Bamberg County in South Carolina will utilize a new technology offering that notifies transportation managers and parents when students get on and off their school bus.
Called StudentConnect, the technology combines RFID and GPS for notification, and alerts are sent to both parents and the transportaiton department if a child does not get off the bus or if the child gets on or off at the wrong location. The service is being offered at no cost to school districts because it is supported by business advertisers and other sponsors.
“Our technology simply provides information to schools and parents that may be critical to a child’s safety,” said Kayode Aladesuyi, CEO of Georgia-based East Coast Diversified, which created StudentConnect. Aladesuyi noted that the technology does not hold or transmit any personal information about students.
Both school districts recently signed five-year contracts with ECDC, a holding corporation with a diversified group of companies that offer technology for logistics and asset management, transportation safety, class attendance monitoring and social media applications.
Andrej Jeremic, vice president of business development for ECDC, said contracts with both school districts are already in effect. He added that company and school district transportation officials at both districts are currently working on implementing the technology before the end of the calendar year.
South Carolina is the only state that operates all of its school buses directly, so the state Department of Education had to first clear the StudentConnect technology for implementation on the state’s school buses. However, it is not mandatory to use the technology in South Carolina. School districts can decide on their own if they want to implement it on the buses they lease from the state.
