By partnering with American company Treker to apply safety check system on buses, The American School (TAS) is working to enhance students’ safety
Safety first. No one understands that better than educators and school owners, who are responsible for not only educating but also keeping other people’s children safe. With lots of incidents in which students’ safety has been jeopardized lately, both in Vietnam and around the world, the need for students’ safety assurance has never been higher.
With students’ safety in mind, TAS has been working in partnership with Treker—a child safety technology company based in California, US, to start rolling out students’ safety check system on TAS buses. This system is one of the school’s many endeavors to increase students’ safety while they study at TAS.
This marks the first time that Treker has ever partnered with an international school in Vietnam to introduce an innovative safety check system. Treker offers a communication platform that touts a proprietary, hands-free check-on system for students, an app for parents, a tablet for drivers, and portals for administrators. The system and solution from Treker were certified by the state of California and have been applied in many schools across America.
For students, Treker will check to see if they get on and off the bus as parents and administrators are notified in real time. Marketed as the only solution of its kind in the industry, Treker technology is also the most accurate and easy to use. The checking device that Treker offers is a fob, which can simply be clipped to students’ backpacks, and Treker will automatically check the students in or out as they board or get off the bus. Any worry from parents about their children’s privacy invasion will be eliminated: the Treker system does not track students’ location, only the bus location. Personal data is not stored on the fob and will only be used to check students onto the bus. If students forget or lose their fob, drivers can still manually check students in or out. Therefore, the whole Treker system is not completely dependent on technology, and drivers can always actively do their job of checking students without the fear of not being able to due to unfavorable circumstances.
For parents, the Treker app is available and will help them track their children’s buses as they travel to and from school. Parents can set up alerts on the app for when the bus is approaching their children’s bus stop, when it arrives at school or when their children board or exit the bus. Treker app will notify parents of all real-time events happening regarding students’ commuting on school bus and allows parents to follow the trips to and from school with a map view. Treker app brings peace of mind to parents at the tip of a finger.
For drivers, the driver tablet installed next to the steering wheel will display rider information, route details, upcoming stops and more—all in real time. Thanks to this function, drivers can accurately manage the number of students boarding or exiting the bus at each stop, making sure no one is left behind or checked as boarding but does not go to school that day. Drivers can also send information to school administrators and parents when needed.
TAS buses are also equipped with wireless TrekAlert, in which drivers must press a button at the back of the bus within three minutes of the vehicle being turned off. If the button is not pushed, an alarm is triggered until the system is reset. By this way, Treker forces drivers to go down to the back of the bus and check to make sure that there is no student left on the vehicle. Drivers are encouraged by this system to be more responsible towards the students they are driving, which will tremendously increase students’ safety when traveling to school and back
home. No other solution offers students this degree of protection.
As mentioned above, Treker also empowers school administrators and transportation directors with admin portals—a tool that offers real-time visibility and tracking of the entire bus fleet, plus accurate details of each student on every bus. All data about bus fleets is stored inside the portals, allowing for comprehensive, customizable reporting with just a few clicks. School administrators can now save a lot of time and reduce cumbersome paperwork when managing the students’ arrival and departure.
The comprehensive Treker safety check system has been on trial in some school buses at TAS, and the school will officially put it in to use at TAS new campus in Palm City Residence, An Phu Ward, District 2. This is just a part of TAS Child Safety Initiative, and there will be more to come. With the opening of the new campus, and a safety check system at hand, TAS is heading to a new future full of promising development—the next chapter in the school’s growth.
Text and Images Provided by TAS
