Cartmell Elementary launches app to digitally track student dismissals

Carroll County’s Cartmell Elementary School recently implemented a new digital dismissal system that school officials say is a quicker and safer way for staff to release students for pickup by parents and guardians.

Implemented on Monday, Oct. 9 after the school’s fall break, the new system has abandoned the old system of paperwork, clipboards, radios, pens, and highlighters in favor of a new digital app called iDismiss.

The application is able to track in real time which student is being picked up and by which family member when students are released beginning at 2:40 p.m. It will also helps teachers stay in contact with each other.

Cartmell Assistant Principal Tina Wilson said the app saves time on how long the dismissal and pickup process requires and provides better documentation and verification on the process.

“It saves a record. It archives a daily record of who was here and when they got here, so we can always look back at that if need be,” she said, noting that it also expedites a process that routinely took 40 minutes into one that takes only 10 minutes excluding the time needs to check everyone in and involves fewer staff members.

“We had 40 staff members involved in the pickup process — 40 staff members who had some type of duty for pickups — and that’s not including our bus people, that’s other people,” Wilson said, adding the new dismissal process requires less people.

“In the beginning, I had to put each individual kiddo, their teacher, their grade level and their tag number in the app. The assistants now when they check people in, let us know who’s here by taking a phone around and typing in the number,” Wilson said.

Parents and guardians are required to have tag numbers in their cars — the placards hanging from the mirror of the vehicle — are for staff members to see and record who has arrived for pickups and for which student. Only the staff has access to the app.

Parents and guardians will be issued the idea identifying tag numbers at the beginning of the school year at an open house or during registration days but tag numbers will change each year, so families will have to restart the registration process each school year. Families can also apply for their number through the school’s main office.

“The receptionist assigns each family two tags with the same number on them,” she said.

Meanwhile, students play their own role in helping organize and expedite the new system. Each student is assigned to a dismissal “wave” sorted by different colored signs in the school gymnasium where all students will gather for dismissal.

“When they get to the gym, they head straight to their wave color,” Wilson said, “There is a teacher at the beginning of each wave or color and a teacher at the end,” Wilson said, noting the two staff members function as the “engine” and the “caboose” of that dismissal wave.

The “engine” teacher for each dismissal group uses a hand-held device to check and record all tag numbers, making sure parents or guardians are at the school for the correct child. Students are then led out of the gym to the waiting vehicles where the “caboose” teacher makes sure each child is safely picked up by the correct vehicle. Once all students are accounted for and safely in their family’s vehicle, the “caboose” signals to the ‘engine’ that the wave can be released to depart the school grounds.

Wilson suggested the new system as a way to automate, expedite and provide tracking and accountability to make dismissals — a process that’s safer and smoother that the previous system.

“I just decided I wanted to automate it and make it more efficient and safer,” she said, adding that she started working on implementing the app in August.

She had originally done research on how to make the previous dismissal system quicker and safer for all but that eventually led her to iDismiss. She checked with a few schools in Kentucky who have used to app as well as an iDismiss representative. After hearing about the positives of the app, she suggested the idea to Cartmell Principal Brandi Wells.

The process then involved about two weeks of training with the core group of assistants, then the rest of the staff and communication with parents on when and how the process would be implemented.

“We did that together for about two weeks before we ever laid it out to anyone else in the building,” she said. “Everything still remained the same at that point, still having the children wait in the gym and having a teacher oversee them while waiting with a radio for who was next.”

There was a trial run a few days before fall break to provide feedback on the process so any needed changes could be made before the system was fully launched after the break.

“And I also had the Kentucky Center for School Safety come and observe our pickup process,” she said. “It took a lot of work in the beginning for me to set it up, and then it took a while for me to get everybody trained on how to do it — how to use the app — and a little bit of a new process and procedure as far as duty spots and things like that.”

So far the new system has opened to a smooth launch. Wilson added that parents and staff like the new system for its safety and convenience and students have taken positively to the process and already know what to do and where to go.

While the app does most of the work to track dismissals and pickups, staff members still control when the roughly 120 vehicles that pick up students daily are released to leave school grounds in an orderly fashion.

In addition to safety and security, the process has also addressed other concerns such as the traffic problem associated with such a large influx of vehicles trying to pick up students at the same time. “We had some neighboring houses that were complaining about their driveways being blocked because of the traffic because it’s such a tight space we have here,” Wilson said. She said some parents would arrive at the school by noon although dismissal wasn’t until 2:40 p.m.

While no students are allowed to be pick up without a tag number, there is a process for use in the rare emergencies that a registered parents or guardian cannot be present for dismissals. “You would have to park and come in if you didn’t have a tag for us to look you up and we can give you a temporary tag,” she said.

The only thing remaining of the previous process is the physical limitations of the Cartmell campus. “We just don’t have a lot of space,” Wilson said, noting that even with a loop and parking lot, there are only two lanes available and buses picking up other students must also be accommodated.

As a result, some waves will occasionally have to stop and let buses come through before continuing. “We could get out even quicker if we had more road or whatever around us,” she added.