College Station ISD expands StopFinder tracking and bus-pass IDs to improve student safety and routing

College Station ISD transportation staff briefed trustees Sept. 16 on StopFinder, a real-time tracking and geofencing app integrated with student bus-pass IDs that the district rolled from a pilot into the full transportation budget.

Speaker 12 explained the system notifies parents when a bus enters a parent-defined geofence and uses color-coded boarding indicators on driver tablets (green for expected boarding, gray for potential routing mismatches, red when a student is not allowed on that bus). The badges are intended to serve as a student bus pass and a backup school ID for registered riders.

Staff acknowledged operational limits: late-run notifications are entered manually by the transportation office rather than generated automatically by the app, and the district is training staff on system functions such as the "Service All" button to prevent accidental status claims. Speaker 12 said 3,343 parents have downloaded and actively used the app, daily ridership is 3,668 as of that morning, and 7,000 bus-pass IDs were batch-printed for the coming year with roughly 1,500 additional prints since the first day of school.

Funding: trustees asked how the program was paid for. Speaker 12 said StopFinder began as a general-fund pilot last year and is now funded through the transportation budget; a separate safety grant has restricted allowable uses and was not used for the full system purchase.

Next steps: continued parent outreach to increase app adoption, additional staff training on scanners and status operations, and enforcement of registration deadlines to manage route assignments.