Some MNPS students don’t have a bus route, even though the school year has already started

The school year has already started, but many students in the city’s schools don’t have a school bus.  Apparently, a large group of students were forgotten about in the mapping of this year’s school bus routes at Metro Schools.  Or, as MNPS puts it,

Metro Schools moved to a new student information system over the summer. The system is called Infinite Campus, and it replaced a massive student data system and the parent portal known as Gradespeed. When Metro Schools switched over to the new system, there was a large group of students who did not have address or household information associated with their accounts.

That causes a problem with the Transportation Department’s bus routing system because it has no address to use in assigning a student a bus stop.

All the student’s addresses (well, some of them) are in this new system, Infinite Campus, but it seems to link up with different software, EDULOG, that plans the routes based on a number of different variables:

The Routing Specialists in the Department of Transportation use the EDULOG software program to determine required bus stops. EDULOG considers bus seating capacity, student data, zoning information, and safety variables during processing to create the safest, most efficient bus routes possible.

Metro Schools says its working hard to add all of the missing student addresses to the system.  After they’re in the system, they’ll be assigned a new route.  Still, some parents are flustered by this apparent lack of preparation:

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