Zonar Releases School Bus Tracking App for Parents

SEATTLE — Smart fleet technology supplier Zonar introduced on Wednesday MyView, an app that can provide parents and caregivers details and location information for their children’s school buses and allow them to customize how they receive that information.

The route-agnostic app comes with a dispatcher portal that is designed to enable school districts to quickly deliver information and allow easy management of general school bus communications to users, including the ability to send messages within the app to keep parents and caregivers informed about late-running buses or bus substitutions, Zonar said in a news release.

Lansing, Mich.-based school bus company Dean Transportation plans to roll out the app in the fall, Zonar told School Bus Fleet.

"We understand the challenges parents and caregivers face in making sure children are where they need to be at the right time. Schedule changes and even vehicle substitutions can cause very real problems," said Christopher Dean, business intelligence and analytics coordinator at Dean Transportation and Dean Trailways. "We anticipate that Zonar MyView will be an outstanding tool to ensure dispatchers can communicate clearly and quickly to parents. This will give parents peace of mind while improving the effectiveness of proactive communication."

MyView can give parents and caregivers real-time visibility into where their children’s school buses are and reduces the inbound calls school transportation departments receive, allowing them to better manage their time and responsibilities.

"Zonar MyView increases the school bus information flow to parents and decreases unnecessary dispatcher interactions," said H. Kevin Mest, senior vice president of passenger services at Zonar. "Parents and caregivers have a tough job so we're pleased to help address some of the challenges caused by lack of information. Enabling them to check on the school bus whenever they want means one less thing to worry about."

MyView also allows a custodial parent to set up a student’s profile and bus information within the app. They can easily and securely share their child’s information with other caregivers, as well as edit, add, or remove other users. With shared access, all authorized guardians who expect the child to arrive at a specific destination can view that school bus's location.

Parents can also build custom zones within MyView to better accommodate their schedules by setting up email or SMS alerts for when the bus is approaching. They can add multiple zones for different drop-off destinations such as daycare, sporting fields, or a caregiver's house. Plus, when managing multiple zones within MyView, parents can link each zone to relevant buses, eliminating unnecessary alerts.

Before the release of MyView, Zonar customers were encouraged to use SafeStop, a school bus tracking solution from a trusted partner.

Learn more about MyView.