Early every school day, 92 yellow buses rumble out of a Carpentersville parking lot and begin the intricate web of some 200 routes that deliver 7,900 students to their classes.
It is a massive exercise in logistics, one that has resisted the move to computers that has been long under way in many classrooms. But not for long.
In an effort to save money and find the most efficient bus routes, School District 300, based in Carpentersville, is introducing a computerized bus routing system next fall.
It will add a high-tech twist to a dispatch system that has been running with paper, pen, worn maps and the very human touch of two veteran, graying bus coordinators.
The two show a wry pleasure in the knowledge that electronic wizardry can`t yet advise a bus driver what to do when the driver finds a snake on board (get it off in a hurry) or a hunting knife (confiscate it).
The $54,000 computer system will be phased in over the next school year. It should replace much of the paperwork and hand calculations involved in devising routes and getting students from three counties to the district`s 18 public schools, several parochial schools and scattered special education sites.
The rest remains up to Nan Page, 61, and Gertrude Braese, 60.
”There are judgment calls a computer can`t make” said Joseph Guill, the district`s transportation director.
”You can never replace their experience.”
Command central for the two dispatchers is a cramped concrete-block room painted purple and lavender. It is attached to the bus shed at district headquarters.
Page and Braese move between telephone and dispatch microphone, fielding calls from parents whose children are late, sick, or at a differerent house that day. Over the microphone, Page tells sometimes frazzled drivers of the changes.
Taped to her desk is a photocopied picture of Clint Eastwood brandishing a gun above the dare, ”Go Ahead, Make One More Change.”
The close quarters aren`t the only reason the two women seem to work as one, finishing each other`s sentences and sensing which map the other needs a moment before the request is spoken.
”We both used to drive routes, and we know what these drivers face,”
said Page, the head dispatcher.
Both women slid out from behind the wheel and moved behind the desks 13 years ago. ”Just one week apart,” Braese noted.
How much will their routine change once the computer system is in full swing?
The bus routes, often mapped out by hand in felt-tipped marker, will appear on computer screens-electronic squiggles in perfect scale. A dot of light on a computer map will mark each child`s home. The color of the light indicates what grade the child is in.
The computers should help find the most efficient routes to connect all those dots and the print out crisp copies for the drivers.
Page said she is glad to hand some of the tasks over to the computer-mapping routes in the subdivisions sprouting up around the area, for example. The subdivisions have the kinds of names developers seem to favor, like Cinnamon Creek and Copper Oaks, Glenmoor and Hampton Woods. And, Page said, they tend to have cul de sacs and winding streets that are difficult to negotiate in a big bus.
”If I had my way, they`d all be on a grid,” Page said. ”But they want them with all curves and cul de sacs.”
The computers are especially welcome as more families move in and out of those subdivisions, Page said, and children`s bus stops must shift to keep pace.
In addition, the district has begun one of the area`s most extensive school-of-choice programs, allowing parents to select which school their children will attend.
The district isn`t required to bus those children, but will if possible, said transportation supervisor Guill.
With more than 100 drivers, several are bound to call in sick on any given day, Page said. When no other substitutes can be found, Page and Braese have been known to climb back behind the wheel themselves.
Said Page: ”You just do what it takes to get the kids to school.”
