COLORADO SPRINGS — All Academy School District 20 students will scan cards to get on and off the bus, starting fall 2025.
Parents will have an app that will tell them when children arrive at school and when bus drivers are running late.
"We can set up a fence around the bus and say when the bus gets within of about two miles of the bus stop or the school, that's when the parent can see where the bus is," said D20's transportation director, Joey Eisenhut.
Eisenhut said the new technology will also tell bus drivers if students are getting on the right bus.
"When a student swipes on a bus, they'll get a picture of the student and a green background to tell them, 'yes that student is on the right bus'," said Eisenhut.
Once the program launches, bus fares will increase to $63 from $50 a semester per student.
School District 49 families have been using a similar bus-tracking program for more than a decade.
"I love it," said mom, Alison Petrowski. "You just never know if something bad happened and you just don't even want to think about it, it's very important to have this kind of technology."
D49's transportation director, Jack Pietraallo, said the app has reduced the number of parents calling the department.
"When you have 3,000 families out there wondering where their bus is, we receive a lot of phone calls and when we can push that information proactively, it stops that phone call," said Pietraallo.
One upgrade for D49 is that bus drivers will get route navigation tablets, just like the plan for D20.
Petrowski is also a D49 bus driver and said the tablets would help her get to her stops on time, "especially if there's an accident and shows me before I get to the point."
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