My local school system is instituting a requirement for students to tap their IDs to board or exit the school bus. That will help keep track where students are, and that they are on the right bus. My kids long since aged out of the public schools, so I have no reason to object. But this seems Orwellian. School buses are free, so this isn’t tap to pay. My kids were in the system from K through 12, and I can’t recall this being a problem once, including for my ADHD kid. I assume kids getting on the wrong bus is rare. Issuing the new ID cards, and putting the card readers and tablets on all the buses seems like a big expense for little gain. And my local school system runs a lot of buses. This seems like training kids to need ID and tap in for everywhere.
Since my kids were in school they’ve been steady looking at ways to ID and watch where kids are. All the time they’re on school property and buses are considered school property.
I have no real beef with it. I can see problems with kids losing or forgetting their ID and missing the bus ride to school.
It would work better if they didn’t have to rely on a 7yo to always know exactly where his school ID is. 100% compliance is the only way this works. Unless they have built in alternate ways to board the bus.
As far as getting used to tapping to pay that’s real world training they’ll always need.
Dang I only had to remember my lunch room ticket and my Weekly Reader quarter every week.
It might be that kids getting on the wrong busses is rare because right now, school districts are devoting a lot of person-hours to adults making sure that kids get on the right bus. Replacing them with an automated system might be little or no increase in safety, but a significant decrease in teacher workloads.
Also, it’s not just about kids getting on the right bus, but the kids who don’t get on any bus at all. The school has to follow up on any students who are absent without notice from the parents.
There still needs to be some sort of backup system, though, because students do lose or forget their school IDs.
This doesn’t seem “Orwellian” at all to me. The school system is supposed to keep track of where the kids in its care are.
I’m speculating that it might also be about keeping kids, and non-kids, from getting on the wrong bus.
Nowadays, for safety, I think most school buildings are locked down to prevent unauthorized people from walking in (everyone from potential school shooters to noncustodial parents trying to get unauthorized access to their children to random weirdos walking in off the street). This might be a way of restricting access to school buses as well as school buildings.
Seems like a good idea to me. Drivers will have student info on the tablets (name, grade, picture allergies or disabilities I’m guessing) as well as turn by turn route directions and the ability to check in students who forget or lost their bus id. Eventually parents will be able to track the location of the bus. The article also states the student IDs will be used to swipe for lunch and attend field trips.
It will probably help kids keep track of how they are getting home, with working families and blended families not everyone goes right home. Some go to a babysitter or after school program or a few days at dad’s house and other days at moms.
It’s been well over 30 years since I took a school bus, but when I did, we were assigned to a specific bus. i.e. I took bus #12 and that was the only bus I was permitted to ride. When I was a freshman or sophmore, I remember at the end of one day we had a kid try to board, he was definitely a student, and the bus driver wouldn’t permit it because he wasn’t assigned to that bus. The driver cited “security reasons” for denial of entry but I suspect it was more about liability.
I suspect the ID cards are in part about liability as well. If the district can demonstrate a kid was dropped off at their stop then it protects them from lawsuits. Does it make anyone safer? I suppose if you’re trying to track a missing kid it might make it easier and quicker to figure out if they were on the bus. And if a district has a problem with bad actors riding on the wrong bus this might help as well. I don’t think it’s really going to make anyone safer in the long run though.
Sometimes it does happen, for legitimate reasons, that a kid gets on a different bus. Maybe they’re spending the afternoon with a friend, and by going home on the bus together, the parents can just pick them up at the end of the day instead of having to make two trips. Parents can usually arrange this by calling the school. And such irregularities would probably be easier to manage with this system than an all-human system, too. The bus driver would see on their tablet that Jimmy Anderson is going home with Mikey Jones as a guest, along with a picture of Jimmy, who they might not recognize by sight. Whereas with an all-human system, you’d probably have to have the secretary or assistant principal who took the call escort Jimmy out to the buses, and tell the bus driver “This is Jimmy, who’s going home with Mikey today”.
Eh, the bus to the school near where I grew up required an ID card 30 years back (not that I could get it, as I went to a different school which had no bus).
I was friends with a pair of identical twins who did attend that school; though the bus travel was free, replacing the ID was not. So when one of them lost theirs they managed to both travel on the same ID for the whole rest of the year by the simple method of one getting on, showing it to the driver, then passing it to the other out of a window. I suspect the system would flag up such shenanigans if you had to tap it.
I guess it shouldn’t be surprising that little kids need ids today. I suppose you need it to get into the school, so whatever system is used for forgetting ids there can be used on the bus.
It sounds reasonable to let the school track where the kids in their care are, and, worst case, if the bus gets into an accident they have a list of the kids on it.
Also good to have early warning if a kid misses a bus.
When I was in high school we had bus passes that let us ride city busses that stopped at our school for free or very cheap. But that was ages ago.
High-schoolers have always had ids. It’s the superegos we’re trying to work on.
Capitalization aside, there are a lot of benefits to everyone having an ID. At my school, absolutely everyone should always have a visible ID of some sort: A permanent card on a lanyard for students and employees, and a sticker with name and photo for visitors of any sort. So anyone can recognize at a glance if there’s anyone there who shouldn’t be. The badges can be set to unlock doors (or only certain doors at certain times), so students can do things like go eat lunch outside on our nice grounds, and still come back in the building, while keeping the building secure. If they have money in their lunch account, or qualify for free lunches, they can scan their ID at the cafeteria checkout (and everyone using the same sort of scanner means that the students on free lunch don’t get singled out). For large study halls, teachers can take attendance by scanning student IDs (smaller classes, it’s expected that the teacher will get to know all of the students, but that’s not practical for a study hall).
Oh, another one: If a teacher witnesses misbehavior in the halls by students they don’t recognize, they can ask to see the students’ IDs, instead of just asking them their names (because of course, students who misbehave don’t always answer that honestly).
And the same photos that are used to print IDs are also stored in the online attendance system, which makes it a lot easier for teachers to learn students’ names.
I live in a neighborhood where many students are right on the cusp between walking and riding distance-wise. Far easier to walk a block away from school to join the bus stop than to walk the mile to school. I’d imagine there will be a lot more tardy students under this system.
Another point: There was an incident a couple of years ago where a man stole a bus from another county, then came around here and just opened the bus door at bus stops trying to pick up kids. All of them realized it wasn’t their bus and didn’t get on, thank goodness, but how frightening is that? Another step of recognition/authorization can’t be all bad.
Schools are still responsible for kids on buses. I could see a district trying to keep kids from going on the wrong bus so they don’t fight with someone, and it would help everyone if they weren’t disappearing to their boyfriend/girlfriend’s house without notice. I had a principal who acted like he could mandate what bus a kid rode, if that wasn’t “her bus”. I’m not convinced he was right, and the whole thing has faded away after he moved, but I can see parental pressure being applied to help avoid this.
I’m glad my small HS doesn’t have to run like this. There was an email about teachers wearing ID a few years ago. I wore it one day and realized they were going to forget. They did. It hasn’t been mentioned since. I also haven’t bothered to put my parking pass in my car. There’s always some vendor or parent in the parking lot anyway, so they can’t go nuts about requiring passes.
It was a while ago, but this appears to be the same incident I am remembering. Can;t say for sure. The warning came out on the neighborhood chat site that there had been two incidents in the county that morning, one local to us and one farther west.
If I recall correctly, one incident turned out to be benign.
I think you’ve been whoosed. @Chronos was making a little joke about “ids” (the Freudian concept of the part of the mind that’s a bundle of urges - hunger, lust, etc.).
