Running as smoothly as the military on maneuvers, Miami-Dade Public Schools’ bus drivers took their fleet of buses to the streets early in the morning a week before the start of classes for a dry run of the 952 routes they will operate throughout the school year to transport nearly 60,000 students.
Schools Superintendent Alberto M. Carvalho was at the Southwest Transportation Garage to greet drivers and discuss the District’s latest initiatives for transportation, the most popular being WiFi-on-the-Go, which provides mobile “hot spots” on District owned school buses so that students have additional time to study or research a project while on board.
Two other initiatives, Flex Stops and GPS Bus Pilot were also launched. Flex Stops will provide more than 800 students with transportation access to their Magnet programs at eight schools across the county. This pilot program satisfies the need to transport magnet students who do not reside within the Transportation Service Zone area but are near a bus route with available seating capacity. The program is created near a school or park and will pick up several students at a time and it is established based on the number of magnet students residing in the area.
GPS Bus Pilot, a school bus tracking system, will give parents and students the ability to track the whereabouts of their assigned bus.