Yasser Marte/East Oregonian, FileTammy Hillmick, a paraprofessional assistant at Sherwood Elementary School, Pendleton, uses the ParentView app to track students onto the bus Nov. 30, 2023, at the school. School district administrators and families in Umatilla County at the start of the 2024 school year have a new tool to boost student success — the Sixth Judicial District Truancy Court Parent Effectiveness Program.

PENDLETON — Checking on your public school student’s bus trip is easy and accurate because of First Student’s online app ParentView.

The Pendleton School District has been using the app for about a year. First Student, the district’s transportation contractor, developed the app, which can be downloaded and allows parents an aerial map of the route their students will be using, said First Student Location Manager Patrick Phillips.

“In the morning they register the bus for the route they will be traveling and once the bus turns on their GPS transponder the parent can track the bus their student is on throughout the entire route,” Phillips said.

Phillips said parents can set up an advance warning of a bus arrival at their stop by either minutes or miles. He said the system can accommodate unexpected events.

“If there’s a train blocking out the town and we have to circle back around, I can send out a message to all the parents enrolled in the app,” Phillips said, “and they will be notified if the bus is running late or maybe there’s a weather delay.”

Karen Weber is Pendleton School District’s transportation liaison and operations assistant. She said the app is helpful in her work.

“It’s a great resource tool, not just for myself but for all the schools as well,” Weber said. “We can look at any bus at any given time to see where it is, in real time, like live tracking. If a parent calls and asks, ‘I’m just wondering where my student’s bus is, because it’s late,’ I can just look at the app and see the bus is three blocks away from their house.”

That means she does not have to call the bus company, and the bus company doesn’t have to reach out to the drivers to ask for their location.

If parents have not yet installed the app on a cellphone or computer, Weber said her job is made easier if parents call her directly.

“In the past parents maybe weren’t sure,” Weber said. “‘Do I call the school or do I call the district office or do I call the bus company? How do I figure out what bus my student rides on? How do I know where my student’s bus is?’ Now most of those things can be done by just one phone call to me.”

She said the app displays a little graphic icon of a bus moving along a map.

“If you are a parent who has several students in the Pendleton School District, maybe who ride separate buses, you can track those buses at the same time,” Weber said.

She said the system can reduce a student’s exposure to cold temperatures during the winter months.

“Yes, absolutely,” Weber said. “I think this is an extra step in safety and making sure that our students are where they need to be at any given time.”

First Student’s bus fleet in Hermiston is using the same program, along with 23 other school districts in Oregon with First Student contracts.

The software also is known as FirstView, but ParentView is the name for the version parents download.

Weber said all the needed information about the app is on the school district website, pendleton.k12.or.us.

“It’s under the Parent Resources tab,” she said. “There is a Student Transportation (Bus) link, and the second paragraph talks about the bus tracking app, ParentView.”

She said it’s simple to download the app.

“There’s an instruction sheet on the website,” Weber said. “You need to know your student’s ID number and what route they are on. But if you don‘t have that information you can call me, and I’ll walk you through it.”

Weber’s office phone number is 541-966-3419.