What you need to know
District staff shared in a July 16 board update that the district will test a pilot program of the SMART Tag system, which records when students board and get off their school bus, at Howard Norman Elementary School beginning in October.
The tag uses radio frequency identification to update the movements of students in the system, similar to the chip technology used in credit and debit cards that enables contactless payment.
Per the district, the program's rollout will occur campus by campus after the initial pilot, with Nadine Johnson Elementary School in line to be the next campus to receive the technology. The progress of implementation of the SMART Tag program will depend on its initial success in this pilot, per the district.
The SMART Tag program is also utilized by neighboring districts, such as Round Rock ISD and Georgetown ISD.
What they're saying
During the board presentation, Dustin Barton, HISD's new assistant superintendent of operations, said the technology would better allow the district and their parents to keep track of who is on each bus at a given time.
"When we get those 50 kids on the bus, we're like, 'Well, who's on your bus today?'" he said. "Now we know any time, any second, who's exactly on that bus; the time they enter the bus [to the] time they left the bus."
