Dismissal zones are logical groupings of dismissal locations that may be used to create more specific dismissal locations and also allow for information to be queued prior to processing.

Information on how dismissal staff enter information for zones.

Zones are most often used when the car line loading area is comprised of a very long line; multiple lines; or when a group of cars moves together in unison then all cars in that group remain stationary until all those cars are loaded, often referred to as a wave.

A long car loading area may be arbitrarily divided into different segments such as front, middle, and rear; or those segments may be given alternate names like blue, red, green. A zone may then be created with a name, e.g., front car line, and that zone may be sub divided into the three locations and named as described previously.

Suppose for this example the total number of car loading locations is comprised of 30 spaces with 10 of those spaces each allocated to one of the three distinct locations. While the cars are awaiting their arrival into the actual loading area, the dismissal staff may enter the numbers for all 30 cars onto a single screen, placing 10 number into the first data entry field, 10 into the second, and the final 10 into the third. Then the dismissal staff may press the Process button to process all 30 cars simultaneously and the students will be notified of the specific location - front / blue, middle / green, rear / green - in the classroom. This may be used to direct students more accurately within a large loading line.

This concept may be extended even further such that locations are designated with even more specific information such as 10 locations of only 3 cars each.

A Word of Caution it is challenging to ensure that cars go to exactly the designated location, so adding more detail to the student dismissal may cause lower efficiency if the information presented to the student does not correlate to the true location of the vehicle. This approach only works well when all of the cars are allowed to move in unison so that their load location is assured.

As mentioned previously, the locations within a zone are in most ways equivalent to any other location so it is also possible to dismiss students to the zone locations in a similar method by creating multiple logical locations along the loading area.

Zone locations may also be used to load when more than one line of cars is present in the loading area. The zone locations may be named accordingly using values such as Lane 1 and Lane 2 or Blue Lane and Green Lane.

Some schools require that all cars be stationary while students are loaded then allow all cars to move out of the loading area together while another group moves into position. This is often referred to as loading in waves. This concept may be for only a single line of cars or may include multiple loading lines. At least one client loads as many as 56 cars simultaneously in seven lanes of eight cars each.

When loading in this fashion, it is possible to have very specific loading location for children including both the row and the position. It is also possible to queue up multiple waves in advance for cars awaiting arrival in the loading positions.

A Word of Caution It is common for adults to think in terms of numbers, such as row 4 position 6 and hope to convey this information to the students. In actual practice what will happen is that staff will inquire to the children about their position number and the only number the child will remember is his or her carpool number.

It is suggested that even when loading in a very large matrix of cars as described here that the level of information provided to the students is more broad such as only defining the lane number (or preferably the lane color) and at most a smaller designation such as front or rear.

Zones and zone locations may only be defined by administrators.

Go to GROUPS / ZONE. If one or more zones already exists the zone name will be listed. To create a new zone click on the NEW button. If your school has sufficient geographical space, you may have multiple parent pick up zones on opposite sides of the school or you may have parking lots that you wish to consider as separate zones.

When creating or editing a zone, the name of the zone is entered on the top right of the screen.

Individual zone locations may be entered in the matrix below up to 10×10. Each location may have its own name and text color which will appear in the classroom.

Do not use location names that are identical to any existing locations as this will result in confusion for the students.

Once all of the information has been entered, scroll to the bottom of the page then click the SAVE button.