According to a recent news release, the school safety and dismissal platform PikMyKid will integrate its app with the K-12 education technology company Central Access’ student information system (SIS), a school data program currently used by 95 percent of public schools across the state.
When a school adopts PikMyKid within their systems, the platform works with a geofence surrounding the school. When parents enter the perimeter and activate the app on their smartphones, teachers can see in real time who is in line, sending notifications to each parent that their child has been dismissed.
Using API integration with PikMyKid and the student information system, schools can add and delete student data to account for absentees, student locations and routes to and from home when coordinating pickup and drop-off procedures, according to Alex Manning, president of Central Access.
Manning said the integration enables schools to streamline student drop-offs and dismissals to make them faster and less chaotic, while keeping student information secure and updated in real time, among other functions.
“The way I looked at it was that PikMyKid solved a problem everyone knew they had but they didn’t know there was an answer for,” he said, noting that the SIS logs information such as attendance, discipline, grades and other metrics for district, state and federal reporting.
“We’re doing an API integration to where PikMyKid can access data they require out of the SIS,” he explained. “We built it out so that there’s seamless integration, so districts don’t have the issue of going through that conversion process. It’s already done for them. As the data is updated [in our program] daily, the data is updated in PikMyKid daily as well.”
PikMyKid is among a slew of other similar programs available to both small rural districts and large urban systems to assist with student safety logistics, such as QManager, School Dismissal Manager and PickUp Patrol.
“From what I’ve seen in interaction with our customers, safety is paramount in the school districts today,” he said, noting that a Mississippi resource officer was killed last month while directing traffic outside Shannon Primary School. “I see this adopted in all schools that have a pickup line issue. ... With integration [like with the SIS], it’s just going to make the end user’s — the administrator’s, the teacher’s, the counselor’s — job so much easier.”
PikMyKid co-founder and CEO Saravana Pat Bhava said the partnership marks a major expansion for the 6-year-old platform, which now has over 1 million active users across 2,000 schools in all 50 states.
Bhava expects schools will adopt school dismissal apps like his as more of them grapple with transportation challenges, like the ongoing bus driver shortage hitting schools across the country, making for longer drop-off and pickup lines.
“We’re experiencing growth of about anywhere from 60 to 80 percent year over year,” he said, adding that they expect that pace to continue with other similar partnerships moving forward. “It really caters to our clients’ abilities to onboard us without much effort and with less friction. The system has really caught on, and stakeholders are asking for more accountability. That’s why products like ours, which kind of pioneered the concept, are getting into the mainstream and getting noticed.”
