ROWUSD SPOT my BUS!

Good evening ROWUSD,

We are excited to announce SPOT my BUS! See below for more information!
We appreciate your patience as we work through some issues with the app. We’ve discovered that it isn’t currently compatible with Android 14 phones. We’ll keep you updated as we gather more information.

Then we have something you might like very much: SpotMyBus. 
SpotMyBus is a smartphone app that shows you where your bus is and tells you when it will arrive at your stop. It's simple to use, accurate, and reliable.  While other apps can tell you how far away the bus is (in miles), only SpotMyBus can tell when it will arrive.

Middle and high school kids love it because it tells them when the bus will arrive at their stop so they can avoid waiting at the bus stop in poor weather when the bus is running late, and never wait for a bus they have missed. 

Parents love it because nobody must wait around at the bus stop, and it's easy to meet their kids at just the right time 
Catching the school bus is easy when your school district adopts SpotMyBus! 

How much does SpotMyBus cost for Parents and Students? 
SpotMyBus is free for parents and students in school districts that adopt SpotMyBus. 

My kids take different school buses. How does that work? 
SpotMyBus allows you to track all your children's school buses. 

How accurately will SpotMyBus predict arrival time for my bus? 
SpotMyBus predicts arrival time with high accuracy, but it simply isn't possible to tell you the exact second your bus will arrive until it actually reaches your stop. Therefore, when SpotMyBus tells you the estimated arrival time it also shows a range (eg. +/-2 minutes).  SpotMyBus uses proprietary statistical methods to ensure that its arrival estimates are the most accurate possible. 

As far as issues with reception 
If you have issues with cell phone reception in your area, you could have similar issues with GPS reception. However, with SpotMyBus, you can run a trace of any route and you can use a feature that shows you where the cellular dead zones are on that route. Also, when a bus enters a cellular dead zone, the SpotMyBus tracker continues to collect the GPS data. Since it cannot send the data while in the dead zone, it holds onto it. As soon as the bus leaves the dead zone, the tracker sends the data. So, while you will not be able to track a given bus in real time while it is in a dead zone, once it is out, you can see the data. The point is any data that is collected is not lost. So, if you were to run a trace for a route, you would see what the bus did even while in the dead zone. If you are running reports such as speeding, bus usage, idling, etc. the info from inside the dead zone will be included. 

In terms of student ridership, if you needed to produce a bus manifest after-the-fact, you would be able to do so. If you needed to check the scan data for a particular student or students, you would also be able to do that -- after the bus is out of the dead zone. The reality is, as advanced as technology is even in 2023, it is not perfect. Just the way we all understand that there are limitations with our cell phones when it comes to connectivity and reception, the same is true for GPS tracking. GPS uses the same cell towers your phones use. Our equipment uses SIM cards just as your phones do 

As far as the parent app, the parents will be able to track their children's buses but again, if the bus enters a cellular dead zone, for the period of time the bus is in the dead zone, they will not get updates. Of course, as soon as the bus comes out of the dead zone, they will see where the bus is and be able to track it to their bus stop. 

To sum up, when it comes to connectivity, no system is perfect. That's the reality of cell tower technology in 2023. The important thing to think about is how much information the GPS system and the student ridership system will provide. The transportation department will have access to all sorts of information that you could never have without GPS. Some examples, you will able to track your vehicles in real time, see them speeding in real time (or run a report after- the-fact). You will also be able to run reports for idling, late buses, and more. You can enter bus reassignments into the system and then the system keeps track of them for you. There's also the parent app, student ridership, and spoken turn-by-turn directions for substitute drivers who don't know the routes they are assigned to. The system also allows you to create directions based on the route the bus ACTUALLY ran, as opposed to the one the routing person or software tells the driver to run. They are not always the same. Once the actual route driven is captured in SpotMyBus, the transportation department can modify those directions, as well as print a very user-friendly route sheet.