By Connor Thomas
KPCW, August 19, 2024--Real-time school bus tracking debuts this school year, beginning Tuesday, Aug. 20.
The South Summit School District is offering free real-time bus tracking for the first time this year.
It’s called the BusRight parent app.
“[Parents] can actually tell not only what time the bus is expected to arrive at home or at school, but they can actually see in the app the location of the bus … via GPS,” Scott Buchanan, the district’s new transportation supervisor, said. “It also provides notifications to them if they wish.”
The district first used BusRight last year to organize its bus routes. Now the app makes some of that information available for parents and students to follow their buses in real time. It’s also a new way for district officials to communicate with parents.
“There's a whole bunch of road construction that's occurring out here in South Summit right now on state roads 32 and 35,” Buchanan said. “We know there's going to be delays that are associated with that, and so we're excited that our parents are going to be able to see right in the app what's going on.”
Parents will need their student’s registration information to sign up for the app. Once they’re logged on, they’ll be able to see a profile for each child.
Those profiles will provide information including which bus they’ll need to take.
“At the beginning of a school year there's lots of questions about what time does my student need to be outside, which bus—all that kind of stuff—and so all that now lives in this application,” the transportation supervisor said. “We're encouraging parents, as part of just kicking off their new school year process, that they just jump in and register for that app so that they can see and have all of it at their fingertips.”
The BusRight parent app is available for Apple and Android devices.
It only provides information about the district’s seven bus routes. It does not track buses headed to sporting events or field trips.
It also doesn’t apply to Silver Summit Academy, a high school near Silver Creek Junction in the South Summit School District, that doesn’t use buses.
The Park City School District already offers GPS tracking for its buses through its free app called ZONAR MyView.
Park City and High Valley transit agencies offer free bus tracking through myStop and ETA SPOT.