Singlewire Software has launched Safety Drill Manager and Bus Manager as part of its Visitor Aware platform for school bus safety.

Safety Drill Manager is designed to enable schools to virtually schedule and document required safety drills, while Bus Manager accounts for students as they get on and off a school bus and provide real-time bus location data.

"Being able to account for student whereabouts and have a recorded chain of custody helps schools and parents better protect students from potential harm," said Paul Shain, president and CEO of Singlewire Software. "Bus Manager lets students know they are on the right bus, records when they get on and off, and offers parents and school administrators insights into where buses are in real-time."

At the end of the school day, students will check into the bus that takes them home. The mounted mobile device equipped with the Bus Manager app will verify the student is on the correct bus and record that they have gotten on. The software also marks when the student has gotten off the bus. Parents and school administrators have access to an online portal that shows where student buses are located within their active route and information about when students got on and off buses. Bus Manager also can be used for students getting on and off the bus at the beginning of the day to come to school.

"In addition to needing more accountability for student whereabouts, we've also found that many schools and districts are still relying on pen-and-paper methods of assigning and tracking their required safety drills," said Bennett Stone, creator of Visitor Aware. "Safety Drill Manager offers a digital solution to assign any type of drill a school or district needs to conduct, have a checklist, and record that the drill was completed."

Using Safety Drill Manager, schools and districts can create drills for any type of safety situation they need to practice, including fires, tornadoes, and active shooters. Drills can then be assigned to specific people who are in charge of scheduling and carrying out the drills, along with a specific time frame for when the drill needs to be completed. Each assigned drill can also include a checklist of required action items that need to be completed. This creates a digital record schools and districts can use, reducing paperwork and making it easy to verify they are meeting local mandates for conducting safety drills.