School buses get a Wi-Fi makeover in Arizona

In an era where the Internet has become almost ubiquitous, an Arizona school district is proving it’s up to speed, having kitted out a school bus with Wi-Fi and plans for more to come.
Vail School District believes internet enabled school transport will encourage kids to pipe down and get some homework done on the way home, instead of carving their names into the backs of seats and throwing the remnants of their lunch at the geeky kid in the front.
In an interview with the Arizona Daily Star, Vail School District Superintendent Calvin Baker even goes as far as alleging that the wi-fied school transport “makes it possible for the bus ride to be a productive time instead of wasted time.” Wasted time? Since when is normal child interaction on a school bus wasted time? Oh, nevermind.
What baffles us the most, however, is that that the school district could possibly imagine children would be using the Wi-Fi on the ride home to do homework, rather than to log on to Facebook, or YouTube or any number of other social ‘time wasting’ sites.
“We know some students will use this connection to help entertain themselves,” admits Barker, conceding that that’s simply being realistic, but he says at a minimum, it gives kids something to do, and thereby makes “the buses safer.” In other words, if you can’t give ‘em Ritalin, give ‘em free Wi-Fi.
Placating children with Internet access is not new to Vail. The district’s schools already have wireless internet access in every classroom and have had since 2001, almost a decade.
Vail is now attempting to get its hands on some government grant money to kit out the rest of its school buses with the World Wide Web by the end of this school year.
The pilot bus was equipped with wireless by a firm called Autonet Mobile back in November of 2009. According to the Star, each wireless router costs $200 with a monthly service fee of $60, so some $15,000 in total for all 19 buses including one year of service. Each unit also comes with GPS, so kids will have to find a better excuse than “sorry sir, the bus was caught in traffic.”
In an attempt to ensure the kiddos aren’t surfing for smut on the way home from school, the star reports that the wireless network is the same as the one on Vail school campuses, with the same security filters.
Ever the realist, however, Baker admits that this may prove as effective as a child proof cap on a medicine bottle:
“Students today have to make their own decisions about what they are going to be looking at on the Internet,” he said. “They are aware that they are expected to behave on the buses the way they would in the classroom.”
Badly, then?