The district has launched the Stopfinder app, which allows parents or guardians to view their child’s bus route, receive real-time updates on bus locations and get notification alerts about any changes or delays impacting the bus schedule directly on their smart device.

Stopfinder is not a new application, as school districts throughout the country are already utilizing the software.

On Monday, Alpine School District officials said they rolled the program out in time for families with children enrolled in summer school programs to use, and it will be available to all families in August when the 2025-26 school year begins.

David Ludwig, a transportation director for the Alpine School District, told the Daily Herald that they’ve used a routing software for a number of years, but it wasn’t accessible to parents.

“We had some changes in Skyward that enabled us to do a parent app,” he said. “The district has really made some efforts to allow us to track kids in Skyward and connect with our routing software so that we could open this option up to parents.”

Skyward is a platform that parents use to access pertinent information regarding their child’s grades, school and other important data.

Ludwig said Stopfinder will allow parents to track their students’ buses by fields or geographic areas, with notifications available within a few minutes of the scheduled bus stop.

“You don’t see the bus the whole time, so you can’t track the bus 24/7,” he noted.

But parents can customize their settings to receive an alert when the bus crosses a specific street or enters a certain area close to their home.

According to the district, its fleet of more than 200 buses transports 20,000 children to and from school campuses.

Parents have previously raised concerns after their child didn’t arrive at their scheduled bus stop on time.

As the Daily Herald reported last August, an Orem mother expressed her discontent with the Alpine School District and its bus transportation system after she said her 5-year-old daughter was left wandering a neighborhood alone because the driver allegedly dropped her off at the wrong location.

The young girl was eventually located, but the situation left the mother skeptical of letting her daughter continue to ride the bus.

Ludwig said implementing the Stopfinder software is one way of enhancing communication between the schools, parents and community.

“We really value the partnership with parents,” he said. “We want to communicate well, be responsible with their children, keep them in the loop and then just from the logistics standpoint, we want them to know when their bus is going to show up.”

Stopfinder can be downloaded for free from the App Store or Google Play.

The district says the app will require an invite and registration through the district prior to accessing their student’s transportation schedule.

Parents are encouraged to contact the Alpine School District Transportation department at 801-610-8850 with any questions regarding the app or their child’s bus information.