LAFAYETTE PARISH — As students return to the classroom, the Lafayette Parish School System is rolling out a new tool designed to help parents stay connected to their child's daily commute.
The district's new My Ride K-12 app uses GPS technology and LPSS transportation software to allow families to track their child's school bus in real time. Parents can view estimated pickup and drop-off times, see the bus's current location, identify the assigned driver and bus number, receive transportation updates and notifications, and know when their child boards or exits the bus.
"It's given us more capabilities, more technological updates in the transportation department, to be able to do what we need to do efficiently," said Ross Cloteaux, transportation operations manager for the Lafayette Parish School System.
Beyond providing updates for families, Cloteaux said the app will also help the district better monitor student ridership and improve transportation planning.
"One of the problems that we kind of always had at LPSS is student ridership – making sure that our numbers [are] accounted for on the buses to be able to efficiently plan for routes," Cloteaux said. "This will be able to give us those capabilities to do that."
To keep the app's tracking accurate, LPSS encourages students to carry their school ID every day. Students scan their ID when boarding and exiting the bus, allowing the system to provide parents with real-time notifications. If a student forgets their ID, bus drivers can manually record when they board and exit so the student can still ride.
"One of the things that we have the capabilities to do is onboarding and offboarding the student without their IDs, but we want to encourage the parents to really encourage their students to be able to wear their IDs while riding the school bus," Cloteaux said.
LPSS officials emphasized that the app only tracks students while they are riding the bus — from the time they scan on until they scan off. Cloteaux also said student information remains private and is protected under the same standards as other district records.
"We have to follow the same laws that we do for any student management data that we have for students," Cloteaux said. "So no other parent will have access to any other student's information."
Cloteaux said the district understands that trusting someone else with a child's transportation can be stressful, and he hopes the app gives families greater confidence and peace of mind during the school commute.
"One of our core values at Lafayette Parish School System is safety," Cloteaux said. "This has given us a huge safety element to be able to do what we need to do for the buses...as well as make sure that the students are safe on the bus going to and from school."
