Z Pass Is A New Project Geared Towards Child Safety

ZANESVILLE, Ohio- The Muskingum Valley Educational Service Center is trying out a grant project that will make your kids safer.

The project is called Z Pass which is designed to enhance child safety. Students are given a card that records what time they get on and off the school bus. Parents are notified via text or email each time that happens along with the location.

“We use that information not only for the safety feature for the student. But we use that information to help us understand how many kids are on the bus. How big a bus we need. How many seats we need for the bus. And that helps up just understand when we buy more buses how many we need to buy. How big of a bus we need to buy,” said Muskingum Valley Educational Service Center Director Mike Fuller.

Another feature of this system is GPS on the bus.

“Parents can access where the bus is at electronically. You can see that the bus is 15 minutes away. We can wait another 5 minutes or so. Clearly that technology can be usefully like hat as well,” said Fuller.

The Z Pass is currently in 20 school districts, the goal is to expand the Z Pass to larger areas of rural Ohio for the new school year.