Students at the National School District will soon have to swipe their ZPass before riding on the district’s school buses.
A Zonar ZPass is a bus card system that tracks and monitors student ridership in school districts across the United States.
The National School District transports about 415 special needs and primary students on a daily basis and is set to incorporate the ZPass sometime this school year, said Cindy Frazee, assistant superintendent of human resources.
“In our district what we found is the need for us to know which children are on the bus and where they’re getting off the bus,” she said, explaining why the district is incorporating such a system. “So it’s a matter of safety.”
Students will scan their ZPasses on a radio frequency identification device when they get on and off a bus, so the district can track the time a student gets on and off a bus.
Transportation director Raul Chavez said the ZPass serves as a safety measure for its riders.
“If there is a student who’s missing or if the parents are unsure where they are located, we can simply go on the computer and check the last time the bus pass was scanned,” he said. “And from there we can identify exactly where the student got on and off the bus, if they did.”
A chip is implanted into the cards, with information about each student. The chip will include information like a student’s address, name and name of their parents.
The ZPass looks like a student identification card with the student’s photo, full name, attending school and bus routes they take listed on the card.
Frazee said the district hasn’t had any major issues with students going missing when riding a district’s school bus, but she insists the ZPasses are a proactive effort.
“We haven’t had any significant issues, it’s just more kind of looking at the overall picture and deciding that this is an area of safety that we can improve upon,” she said.
Frazee said the bus pass also helps identify ridership in case of an accident. The pass can identify each student on the bus.
Initial cost for the ZPass and its equipment is about $15,000, which will be taken from the general fund, Frazee said.
Chavez said the district is still working on a protocol as to how lost or misplaced ZPasses will be replaced.
