It was all about child safety at the most recent Roslyn School Board meeting as District Superintendent Dr. Dan Brenner outlined the new Bus Monitoring system. The system will help school bus drivers keep tabs on children’s whereabouts from the moment they get on the bus until the time they get off.
“The first step in the project was installing GPS on the buses which was completed last year,” said Dr. Brenner. “The second phase of implementation is student monitoring.”
Dr. Brenner said that the Heights School would be a pilot program for the new system starting with the kindergarten class. If things go well all of the Heights students and buses will become part of the program.
The final phase of the project will be to assess the status of the monitoring system and then try to roll it out to the Harbor Hill Elementary School and once that is completed to use it at the East Hills Elementary School.
The system works by giving each individual child identification cards and lanyards that they will scan as they get on and off the school bus. The child will be responsible for carrying the card with them each day and the bus driver must ensure that every card gets scanned. If a child forgets their card the bus driver will supply them with a generic card that they can scan.
The cards will each have a separate identification number and the child’s last name boldly printed on the front of them.
“We will be the first school district in the area to have this type of system in place,” said Dr. Brenner. “This system will seriously increase the level of security with our children. It is a solid investment in monitoring the security of our kids and with it we will always know where they are.”
If the bus monitoring system is a success at the kindergarten and elementary school levels the district will consider an application at the Roslyn Middle School.
In other news, the Roslyn Bulldogs Booster Association was honored at the school board meeting for their generous monetary donations to upgrading the Roslyn High School athletic fields. The group contributed $200,000 to improving the athletic complex through the “It’s Your Turf” campaign. One hundred thousand dollars of that donation was through a state grant.
“If I can speak for the seven members of this board including Clifford Saffron, who is not here today but was the biggest advocate of this project, we’re very happy with the results,” said Board President Meryl Waxman Ben-Levy.
“Given our budget the new facilities are as good as I could have hoped for,” added Dr. Brenner.
The next school board meeting will be held on Thursday, Jan. 23 at the Harbor Hill School.
