Prince George’s County public schools set to roll out new school bus tracker app this fall

SUITLAND, M.D. (DC News Now) — Prince George’s County public school leaders will soon be rolling out a new school bus tracker app called Chipmunk.

One mother said she is excited for the new app seeing as her children are currently student.

“I am just excited for the new Chipmunk app that will offer real-time updates,” Jocelyn Route said. “And that’s not something we got with the old app from last year, and we will be able to coordinate, and we will be able to get our children off the bus on time and not be waiting.”

Many parents had complained last school year about the older app, Stopfinder, saying it had lots of problems and couldn’t accurately track buses and students’ whereabouts. The system had glitches, and many parents had to wait longer until their kids’ buses dropped them off.

PGCPS Board member Phelton Moss, Ph.D., said the new app Chipmunk is more user friendly and is a better system to allow parents to know where their children’s buses are and will cut down on longer wait times.

“One of the first things I talked about after being elected to the board was some of the inefficiencies with the old app, and parents were not able to communicate with the app to find their children,” Moss said. “So, the district is responding to parents’ concerns about getting their children to and from school safely and timely, and I think Chipmunk is going to do that.”

Phyllis Wright is hoping the new updated app will function better this school year. She has two daughters in the school district who are students. She said she’s glad the school system is doing something to improve the bus tracking technology.

“A lot of time, the parents couldn’t get on the app, and I couldn’t get on it, and I even stopped trying to use it,” Wright said. “And every time I tried to use it, they would say they are having problems with the app. Hopefully, the new app will be better.”

Moss said that in a few weeks, the school system will do a pilot test program with parents to make sure the new app Chipmunk works smoothly.