GPS and RFID and School Security

I’ve been paying a lot of attention to my search engine visitors lately.  A recent spate of searches on GPS for school buses is pretty understandable … it’s back to school time all across the USA.  When I first got into the GPS tracking business I thought that school buses and student safety in general would be a big segment of my market … but it hasn’t worked out that way.  Just this morning I sort of marveled at a headline where one of our local districts was spending about $300,000 for a consultant to teach them how to let principals make more decisions about spending in their own schools, yet they haven’t spent a cent lately on pupil safety or GPS fleet management.

The old saw about “no money” is the most abused and over-used excuse for sitting on one’s ass and doing nothing in any government agency.  It’s particularly overworked in the public school industry. 

On 11 September 2001 a gang of terrorists attacked the US and caused a terrible loss of life, untold property damage and provided the excuse for a war, that the US will never win.  Today we are little, if any, more secure than we were on September 10th, 2001.  We now have bans on cigarette lighters and lipstick, but terrorists can roam our streets at will.  And where, I might ask, would a prime target for these terrorists be?  I hope not, but a prime thought in my mind would be our children, our most precious and irreplaceable resource.  While the do-gooders like Al Gore promote bad science and our best scientists go on vacation to argue if Pluto is a planet, our children still roam, un-cared about by government and unprotected.

As I mentioned I try to sell products and services to school districts.  This gives me reason to visit a lot of schools.  Ladies and gentlemen, our security for these schools is just about non-existent.  It mostly consists of signs that tell law-abiding citizens “all visitors must report to the office”.  Well big deal.  I’m sure an Islamic terrorist is going to read and heed that.  Disgusting. 

Thousands and thousands of school buses ply our roads every day taking children to and from schools.  In 99.9% of the cases we don’t know the whereabouts of these busses from the time they start their runs until they end, we don’t know who is being carried by these buses (Islamic terror groups have used children as terrorists and have strongly affirmed they will again in the future) and once the children get to their school we don’t even have a lock on the door or any access control procedure to know who is inside.  Sadder than sad.

This is what we need to do, now.  And we have the money for it … in fact, it will overall pay rather than cost.

Require each school district to provide an unalterably RF-readable identity badge to each child, teacher and other school employee.

Equip each and every school bus with a GPS tracking system that reports the buses whereabouts, reads the tags of each individual trying to board, and records where each individual is dropped off.

Lock unessential doors to school buildings and equip all necessary pupil entry doors with readers to monitor who tries to enter and account for who is inside and not inside at all times.

This post is already long enough, but I can assure you I can design, implement and train you how to operate such a system in a manner such that it will pay for itself.  It will make a school district money in at least the following ways:

• Bus operating costs
• Reduced liability costs
• Reduced building operational costs
• proper time and attendance accounting/reimbursement
• Cost recovery for Medicare allowable costs (most districts don’t even know what they are throwing away in this area)
• And many more.

So, is this little Bush-baiting blowhard in Colorado just letting off steam, or does he have any idea as to what he’s talking about?  Well, there’s one way to find out … get in touch.