Albany Elementary School Principal Tim Armstrong has been working since 2008 on a software program that has successfully made it through its first year of use.

The program is a way for parents to pick up their children from school that has become quicker and more efficient than methods used in the past.

Although it took some time for the program and protocol to become efficient, now Armstrong says they dismiss school at 3:10 p.m. and by 3:35 all the students have been picked up and have made it to their parents’ vehicle in a safe fashion.

The program is called the Student Management Transportation Solution or SMTS.

Armstrong said there is a fee to using the software that runs his program and this year that cost has been sponsored by Arica Collins of Dyer Drug Company, Inc.

“Arica has agreed to sponsor the QR codes or hang tags and that’s a great way she is supporting our school,” Armstrong said. “I greatly appreciate her for doing that.”

The program used at AES is designed to authorize the parents to pick up their child or children from school in the afternoon.

It keeps track of who is allowed to pick up each child and it documents and communicates that to the staff during pick up.

“It’s a safety software basically,” Armstrong said. “Some parents have different visitation schedules and some students are picked up by extended family members. There is no way to keep up with it any other way. We have a file that tells who is supposed to pick up which student on a particular day of the week … well you can’t keep up with all that information.”

With hi SMTS software in use, Armstrong said he can immediately communicate that information to all the staff.

“All the people who need to know have all that information,” Armstrong said. “That information is secure on the file server. There are no worries about losing personal information. It’s a great way to communicate authorized documentation and manage that information.”

In addition to keeping track of parent picking up students, Armstrong said it also keeps track of students who ride the bus from school. It lists what bus each student rides as well as the bus schedules.

AES uses the program to track how 531 students leave the school.

Of those 531, around 130 are picked up by a parent or family member. Armstrong said by the end of last year, a total of 23,380 students were safely placed in a vehicle during the school year.

“It’s a solution that will empower administrators in keeping our children safer,” Armstrong said. “I can’t use the word ‘safe’ because nobody is safe. We know that from Florida Sunday morning, but it’s a safer way of doing it because we have all these procedures in place.”

Now that the program is in place and is successfully operating in Clinton County, Armstrong said other schools in the area have examined the possibility of adopting the program into their respective school system.

“The parents who pick their children up absolutely love it,” Armstrong said. “Parents pull in and I scan the QR code and instantly it pulls up the child they are registered to pick up. Every person has to have their own QR code. When they scan that code, it lists the students they are authorized to pick up. If it’s not their day, they can’t take the child.”

Armstrong further explained how the system works in combination with staff who are with the students scheduled for daily pickups and are waiting in the school gymnasium.

“In the gym, they have a monitor and their name pops up with a check mark in order in which they pull around,” Armstrong said. “It’s almost like placing an order at a drive through. Parents don’t have to get out anymore. I don’t have to worry about people I don’t know coming into our building. If they aren’t authorized and they don’t have a QR code then they aren’t even going to get to the gate.”

Armstrong hopes in the future other schools will consider using the program as a safety measure.

“I really do believe this is going to keep our kids safer,” Armstrong said. “Yeah it took us a week or two to get it down, but now we have it down to a science and they love it.”

With school shootings and mass shootings occurring more and more, keeping students safe is Armstrong’s number one priority.

“It is in my book,” Armstrong said. “We have to keep them safe first, then we have to educate them. You can’t overprotect your child.”