The East Baton Rouge Parish school system is upgrading the software it uses to manage its bus fleet, including adding a feature common in other districts that allows parents to track their children as they board and exit the bus.

After receiving proposals from several companies, the school system has opted to continue with the vendor it has been using, , but adding features it has foregone in the past, including the student ID tracking system. Other new features include the ability to manage field trips as well keep tabs on the fleet, maintain the appropriate inventory of parts and organize repairs.

鈥淲e will be able to track the students who are riding the routes and manage our routes in more detail,鈥� Monique Scott-Spaulding, chief operations officer, recently told the School Board.

The School Board voted Dec. 15 to let the administration strike a deal with TripSpark, the Cleveland, Ohio-based vendor the school system has used since 2011. Scott-Spaulding said her goal is to have the new system running by the start of the 2023-24 school year next August.

TripSpark is 聽this year seeking the work. A five-member in-house evaluation gave TripSpark the highest score. The only other vendor to come close was , based in Schenectady, New York.

In March, when the board agreed to seek proposals, the Transportation Department estimated that the new software would cost as much as $1.2 million upfront 鈥� paid for through federal COVID-19 relief funds 鈥� and then $312,000 annually, a 10% increase over current transportation software spending. The school system has not released publicly an updated estimate.

When the proposal came up in March, board member Mike Gaudet defended the added expense.

鈥淭o me, this is money we should have spent years ago and we鈥檇 be in a much better place today,鈥� Gaudet said. 鈥淣ot spending this kind of money is accepting that we are putting children at risk in the future. I can鈥檛 accept that.鈥�

For parents, the biggest change will be the ability to track their children via a radio-based ID system. Since 2018, parents, using the app, have been to track the buses their children are supposed to be on, but did not know for sure whether their children were on board or not. The upgrade will also allow parents to better access transportation information and route data for their children.

In late 2017, Gary Reese, then chief of student support services, told The Advocate that he had considered buying a student ID tracking system but opted not after some drivers and parents raised student privacy concerns.

For school officials, a lot of the value of the upgraded software will come the ability to devise better routes, and if possible eliminate routes, at times when there鈥檚 a chronic shortage of bus drivers.

, then-Transportation Director James Bell聽鈥� he鈥檚 since changed positions in the district and been replaced by Chauncey Moore聽鈥� said better software will mean 鈥渆xponentially increased service, reliability, tracking, and management鈥� and would allow his office 鈥渢o locate buses in real-time, fine-tune stops, identify slack time for better asset allocation and handle daily substitutions to ensure 100% driver coverage.鈥�

Scott-Spaulding told the board that the Transportation Department has been focusing on eliminating the need for elementary students to change buses and has cut the number of those routes in half.

One thing the new software won鈥檛 address is the lack of working cameras on buses. From 2012 to 2018, the school system relied on a Metairie-based company that paid for cameras that doubled as traffic cameras and charged tickets to illegal passersby in school zones. That company quit providing service and later ran into financial and legal trouble and changed management.

Superintendent Sito Narcisse has been looking for an alternative. Video is especially useful in resolving traffic accidents and cases of student misconduct on buses.

Gaudet told The Advocate that he is expecting a proposal on school bus cameras to come to the board in the next few months.