By BROOKE GOLDMAN

RESERVE – The St. John the Baptist Parish School System recently installed a tracking device on each of its 60 school buses which can pinpoint the exact location of the vehicles at any time.

Director of Transportation for the school system, John Owens, said the system installed this high-tech device for many reasons, including accountability.

“It’s hard to keep an account of all the buses since we don’t have a central yard,” said Owens. “This was the next best practical thing.”

“We emphasize good workers daily and now we can make sure they are on time and on schedule,” he added.

According to the St. John Parish Superintendent of Schools, Michael Coburn, this is the first parish in the state to have this kind of technology.

“To my knowledge, St. John is one of the few school systems in the country to have this,” said Bill Cayhill, a consultant for Tomba Communications and Electronics, based in Metairie, the supplier of the service.

The device has a sender and a receiver to a satellite which contracts movements on the buses and provides an update on each vehicle every five minutes.

School officials can receive this information on a customized Internet Web site.

“If a driver is speeding, we receive an e-mail from the satellite,” said Owens. “We have had complaints in the past about speeding but I know we have great bus drivers.”

It cost the school system approximately $53,000 for the tracking system and Felix Boughton, the director of Finance for the school system, said the money for this came from the system’s transportation funds.

According to Boughton, each unit cost $1,000 and a monthly fee of $25 is tagged on with that.

“It’s not like we are looking over the drivers shoulders,” said Owens. “And we haven’t had any complaints about it yet.”

Alvin Gross, a bus driver for St. John Parish for 13 years, said he has no problem with the device.

“I feel safe,” said Gross. “And the parents should too.

“I do my job so I have nothing to worry about.”

The system will also help out when a bus breaks down, said School Board President Gerald Keller.

“We have gotten good responses from the educational community,” said Boughton. “If parents complain and say their bus was late, we can see if it truly was.”

The biggest and most important reason for the system was demonstrated to Coburn Thursday after hearing about a Pennsylvania school bus that was missing for six hours with students on board. The bus ended up in the Washington, D.C. area.

“Protecting our students is our first interest,” said Coburn. “We need to protect our children and this shows how this system benefits us.”

Coburn said if something like that happened in St. John, officials would know immediately and know the bus’s exact location.

“This is a first line of defense for security,” said Cayhill. “We live in a different world now, it’s sad but true. You have to think outside of the box since Sept. 11.”

“Parents can feel more comfortable knowing where their child is,” said Boughton.