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Source: The Santa Fe New MexicanJuly 13--When school starts Aug.迷你倉新蒲崗 14, students who ride the bus will be carrying radio frequency identification device cards -- known as RFIDs. The cards will allow district officials, and parents, to find out if a student is on the right bus -- or on the bus at all.The cards can be monitored through the district transportation department's GPS system."The main concern here is the safety and security of children, and that starts the moment they get on the bus," said transportation director David Perez. "We want to account for these children in real time, so if parents call and say, 'My kid is not home,' we can log on our website and through their RFID card find out if they are on the bus, off the bus, or if the bus is just running late. We can pinpoint it down to an exact street to where that bus is."But, Perez emphasized, the system can't track a student who chooses to walk home, hitch a ride with a friend without informing anyone, or stay late at school without Mom or Dad knowing. So guardians and parents might still be left in the dark.Perez, who started his job in March, said the district rarely gets calls about missing kids. But, he said, a lot of times parents call and ask, "Where's my kid? It's 10 minutes past bus drop-off time." He said the district cannot prevent kids from walking or grabbing a ride with someone they know. "We can only keep track of who is on the bus. ... With this system, we can at least tell parents, 'Your kid did not take the bus home today.' "He said in some cases, one parent knows that a child is getting home by alternative means, but the other parent does not, leading to miscommunications, worried phone calls and confusion.Perez said roughly 9,000 of the district's 13,000 students take school buses to and from school sites. The district has 88 regular buses and employs about 100 drivers and driver aides.The transportation budget for school year 2013-14 is about $3.5 million, and the new RFID system costs about $900,000, Perez said.School districts in other parts of the country -- Georgia, Colorado and Texas, for instance -- have announced similar initiatives over the past year or so. One district in the San Antonio, Texas, area recently started a pilot program to utilize technological tracking devices implanted in students' iden迷你倉出租ification cards to monitor their whereabouts on school property only.Some organizations, including some chapters of the Americans Civil Liberties Union, have suggested that such devices are a possible infringement on students' privacy. Micah McCoy, communications manager for the ACLU of New Mexico, said via email Thursday, "We are always concerned that new surveillance technologies employed by the government will be misused. Before we let the government issue tracking devices to our children, we should first ensure there are clear limits to their use and clear consequences for overstepping those limits."Gabe Romero, director of safety and security for Santa Fe Public Schools, said, "I know there may be some concern about tracking our children too much, but it's the difference between relying on the bus driver's memory and having a tool that helps us identify when a kid comes on the bus and off the bus."For instance, a parent may become concerned if a child inadvertently gets off at the wrong stop. While bus drivers do their best to prevent that, and usually know where children are supposed to get off, such mishaps occur, Romero said. In this case, the RFID program will at least let the district and the parents know where the child disembarked -- though again, it will not pinpoint that child's location once he or she is off the bus."It does not track them beyond the bus," Romero stressed.Parents who want their children to ride the bus must pre-register their children before the school year resumes in mid-August, Perez said. By the end of July, the registration forms should be on the district's website -- www.sfps.info -- but until then, he said the best way to register is to visit the district's transportation department on Yucca Road, next to Santa Fe High School, between 7 a.m. and 4 p.m. any weekday.Parents must bring provide their children's names and student identification numbers, but he said there is no need to bring any other documentation. Children who are not registered in the school district must do so before applying for an RFID card.Contact Robert Nott at 986-3021 or rnott@sfnewmexican.com.Copyright: ___ (c)2013 The Santa Fe New Mexican (Santa Fe, N.M.) Visit The Santa Fe New Mexican (Santa Fe, N.M.) at www.santafenewmexican.com Distributed by MCT Information Services儲存倉