Rochester School District launches school bus tracking app

ROCHESTER, Minn. (KTTC) – Rochester Public Schools (RPS) families will now be able to keep track of their students’ buses in real time.

In partnership with busing company First Student, RPS is launching a bus tracking and parent communications app called FirstView. The app shows the location and direction of the student’s bus, for both morning and afternoon trips.

RPS has been working with First Student on the app for several years. District leaders say they weren’t happy with the first version of the app because they had to align every student with their route number.

In the new version that RPS, parents can now find the route number that their student takes and follow that.

“It’s been nice to get that alert when the bus is about half a mile from my house so that we can send the kids out right at about that time and not send them out too early or too late and just make sure that parents know where their kids’ bus is and if it doesn’t appear that it’s coming, they can call us or check in on it,” RPS chief administrative officer said.

Before the FirstView app, if a bus was running behind, the District would send out emails to parents. The District will continue to send out those emails along with having the app option.

To register for the app, RPS parents can sign up using the code they received in their email from the District.