Atlanta GA, July 26, 2006 – OneGIS is pleased to announce that it has implemented a school bus route website with the assistance of Forsyth County Georgia Board of Education staff. The team built the site using OnPoint™ Professional from Orion Technology, an extension to ESRI® ArcIMS® internet map server technology, to provide county school bus route information to the public.
Forsyth County is located in the northern part of the Atlanta metropolitan area and has a population of more than 140,000. It is one of the fastest growing counties in the nation with a 6.4% annual growth rate. With 28 percent of the population under the age of 18, the Forsyth County Board of Education has quite a challenge routing school buses and keeping parents, teachers and students informed of those routes and the nearest bus stop for students. The Board of Education turned to OneGIS to help them implement a website that would ease the burden of getting school bus route information to the public.
The implementation of the website has been separated into two parts. Part one involves the installation and configuration of OnPoint Professional, which allows parents and students to find bus stops, bus routes, schools, and attendance zones. Users of the website can search for a student’s bus route based on their address. All students’ addresses have been geocoded in the county ArcGIS database that the website draws its data from. Future plans include the ability to allow board of education staff internal access to the website to provide a comprehensive view of maintenance history for each facility and look up student information such as address, parent contact numbers, grade history, class schedule, etc.
The second part of the implementation involves the development of a 2-way interface between ArcGIS and the board of education’s Infinite Campus system. Infinite Campus is an Education Process Management (EPM) system, which combines multiple student data management programs into a single integrated application that automates, manages and controls processes throughout the education enterprise. As a student’s information is entered or modified in Infinite Campus, the interface automatically updates the GIS with the student location and other attributes such as the school, grade level, etc. If the student is new or has moved, the new location is geocoded. The GIS then uses the geocoded location to assign the student to a bus route and a specific bus stop. The GIS is also used to create and modify routes and stops. The resulting information is then sent back to Infinite Campus through the interface.
Mr. Bryan Carlisle, Enrollment, Boundary Planning and GIS Coordinator for Forsyth County schools commented, “I was impressed by how fast the new website was set up and configured in OnPoint. The system is going to provide our students and parents an easy to use and convenient way to find out details about their bus stop and route. It will help parents get an appreciation for where their stop is within the route and how many stops there are. I am sure that the new website will become very popular with parents and students, as well as staff.”
The new website can be accessed at http://www.forsyth.k12.ga.us/article.asp?article=42.
Mr. Carlisle will be presenting a paper on the subject at the upcoming ESRI User Conference in San Diego on Thursday, August 10 at 10:30AM in the GIS in School Administration Track titled, “Launching a GIS for a Rapidly Expanding School System”. In addition, OneGIS invites interested parties to Booth #2013 at the conference to discuss this project as well as other implementation and integration services it offers.
Emmett Walsh, Vice President of Professional Services for OneGIS commented, “We were pleased to be able to perform this work for the Forsyth County Board of Education. The success of the project is a testament to the flexibility and configurability of the OnPoint product. This software really enhances the capabilities and usability of ArcIMS. Its architecture helps us provide integration services directly from ArcGIS to third party systems like Infinite Campus. Because of this, we expect that OnPoint will be a continuing and significant part of our project offerings in the future.”
About OneGIS
OneGIS is a full service consulting, system integration and outsourcing firm specializing in the development of turnkey GIS solutions for the electric, gas, water, wastewater, storm water, telecom, and municipal government markets. Its goal is to provide off the shelf solutions that provide significant business benefit to organizations implementing Geographic Information Systems. OneGIS focuses its development, customization, and implementation efforts solely on ESRI-based applications, thus offering solutions on the best GIS platform available in the market place. For further information, visit www.onegis.net.
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