Rogers : Web site to track school bus routes called worrisome
Posted on Friday, August 24, 2007
The Rogers School District should abandon new software that posts school bus route information on the Web, some bus drivers and parents said Thursday.
The system is commonly used in school districts nationwide and poses no threat to student safety, school and police officials said.
Rogers, the fifth-largest district in Arkansas with about 13, 300 students, launched the system this school year.
Users can use the district’s Web site to find the time and location of school bus pickup and drop-off points.
Mike Chaney, president of the Student Transportation Association of Rogers, a group of Rogers bus drivers, said this information should not be publicly available. At the minimum, it should be password-protected, he said.
Anyone — including parents in custody disputes, terrorists, or even sex offenders — can access the information, Chaney said.
“It’s a shopping cart for pedophiles,” Chaney said.
John Richert, parent of two Rogers students and president of the Lowell Elementary parent group last year, also doesn’t want the information so easily available.
“I just can’t see what’s wrong with being overprotective nowadays with all those people out there,” he said.
Bill Adams, an Eastside Elementary parent, said Chaney’s concerns are real. A registered sex offender has been charged in the January rape and kidnapping at Eastside of a 10-year-old girl.
“Technology can be our best friend, but it can also be our worst enemy,” he said. “I’ve never been a proponent of making the task of a pedophile any easier.” Earlier this month The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, Va., reported that four regional school districts stopped posting route information on the Web due to similar concerns.
“These are legitimate safety concerns,” said Mike Martin, executive director of the National Association for Pupil Transportation, a New York-based trade group that represents members of the school transportation industry. “I don’t think they should be minimized.” It’s not unusual for school districts to post route information online, however.
Bus routing data — as long as it doesn’t contain individual student addresses — is public information, Julie Johnson Thompson, an Arkansas Department of Education spokesman, said in an e-mail.
The Bentonville, Fayetteville and Springdale school districts in Northwest Arkansas post routing information online, school officials said.
More than 170 school districts nationwide use the same software Rogers does, according to Carter Young, a spokesman for Education Logistics Inc., the Montana-based consultancy that provides the software for Rogers.
Lt. Mike Johnson, a spokesman for the Rogers Police Department, said he sees no problem with posting the data on the Web.
Anyone can map a school bus route without using the software simply by following a bus, Johnson said. The software could increase student safety at stops by helping parents know exactly when their children come and go, he said. Ron Young, Rogers’ transportation director, said the software makes disseminating routes to parents markedly easier. Rogers carries about 6, 000 students along 100 bus routes daily. Phone lines at the transportation department used to ring incessantly around the start of school, Young said. Not this year, which frees employees up to handle other tasks. “It’s like we’ve come out of the dark ages into the light,” Young said. “It’s amazing.” Carter Young said the school district could alter the system. A few Education Logistics clients opt to password-protect their Web site. Others choose to keep access in-house, but create networks accessible to more employees so information can be disseminated more quickly. Martin said it is up to the local community to decide what level of security it desires. There is no right answer, he said.
To contact this reporter: jkrupa@arkansasonline. com
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