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Jackson schools purchase School Pass app

Jackson schools purchase School Pass app

At a special called Jackson County School Board meeting on Aug. 11, the board approved the purchase — upon final legal review — of the School Pass app for $29,000 in order to keep schools safe and streamline the pick-up, drop-off process. 

The app can handle daily student health and wellness checks. Parents will use the app to let schools know that students have not run a fever or been around people who have been exposed. Staff members that arrive on campus without completing a health check will be alerted by the app that they should complete a health check. The app will also alert administration if staff have come onto campus without completing a health check. 

The app will help Jackson County Schools streamline transportation through carline automation. Parents can use the app to check-in as “here” when they are in line to pick up their child. The app will alert the student’s teacher that someone is there to pick them up, the teacher will choose “dismiss,” which will in turn alert the staff member in charge of the carline that the student is on their way from the classroom to carline. 

If a parent does not have access to the app, the schools plan to have an employee at the beginning of the carline ready to check a parent in as “here.” 

If a student has a usual mode of transportation that needs to change for the day, the parent can use the app to inform the school that a child will, for instance, be a car rider instead of a bus rider for the day. The app also allows bus drivers to check students in as they arrive on the bus, which will notify parents that their child is on the bus that day. After school systems will also be programmed into the app for notifications of arrival. 

The app can also complete sex offender checks for any visitors to the schools, though JCPS says they do not expect many visitors this year. It will also handle volunteer and substitute tracking. The app will have the full list of authorized substitutes and volunteers for teachers to pull from. 

In the case of an emergency evacuation, once in a secure location each teacher can check-in all the students they have with them. This way administration can know who is missing, who they need to locate and who has which students with them.