Everyday Wireless was the first company to successfully implement rider attendance in a live school bus environment. The company has implemented three different student identification technologies: radio-frequency identification (RFID), bar code, and biometrics.

Our proven rider attendance technology has helped several districts automate the traditionally very manual Medicaid reimbursement reporting process. Also, by knowing exactly when and where your students are getting off the bus and being able to respond to a parent’s call with accurate-real-time data helps to dramatically improve the service you provide your community. If a child gets off at the wrong stop, an alert message can be sent back to your operations center and dispatch can contact the parent pro-actively to minimize the potential danger to that child.

Placing identification technologies on school buses is not especially difficult, but implementing them and making them operationally efficient is where Everyday Wireless continues to differentiate itself from the competition. The fundamental challenge and key Everyday Wireless differentiator is implementing reliable identification technologies without slowing down bus loading and unloading. Unreliable reads result in poor and incomplete information, while slowing bus loading and unloading results in enormous costs, as more buses and routes would have to be added.

Everyday Wireless pioneered RFID and bar code rider attendance solutions and is the only company that has rider attendance installations that are fully integrated into routing and scheduling software. While we also implemented biometric technology, we do not advocate this technology as bus loading and unloading times are significantly slowed.

With these factors in mind, we optimized our Passive RFID technology so as to achieve reliable reads while not impeding the loading and unloading times of students. The RFID reader is positioned near the front door of the bus and provides an unparalleled 36 inches of read range. With this type of range, students can enter and exit the bus at a normal pace, without having to physically produce their RFID card or fumble around in their backpacks.

To protect the privacy of the student, the system was designed to read only a unique ID number. This number is forwarded to the Everyday Wireless transceiver on the bus, which then transmits the data back to the data back to the base station and central server located at the transportation central server located at the transportation department. The district’s central server then reconciles the unique ID number from the card with the corresponding student in the school’s database.

Everyday Wireless recommends bar code technology for special needs buses. Bar code technology is less costly, and in most special needs situations, loading and unloading time is not nearly as critical. With a bar code implementation, a driver or aid simply scans a student bar code printed on a route sheet to identify the students.