September 26th, 2008
School Buses Could be Rocking to Music
By Michael Hewlett
Winston-Salem Journal (NC)
Davidson County school buses could soon be rocking to The Jonas Brothers, now that the Davidson County Board of Education has tentatively approved a new radio program aimed at young people.
BusRadio is a company based in Massachusetts that provides radio programming with age-appropriate music to more than 1 million listeners from the ages of 6 to 18, according to the company’s Web site. Its music choices range from teen sensation Miley Cyrus to Coldplay.
The Davidson County Schools would be the first school system in North Carolina to try the program, which is in about 170 school districts in the United States.
The contract hasn’t been signed and is being reviewed by the school board’s attorney, David Inabinett, said Fred Mock, the school superintendent.
Jay Temple, the school system’s transportation director, said that the new program would help ensure safety on school buses and reduce discipline problems among students.
“Music has a soothing effect on kids,” he said.
Allan Thompson, the chairman of the school board, said that the program sounded like a good idea. “It sounded good to us right off,” he said. “A lot of kids love music… We have some who said they study better with it.”
The school system would try the program on a pilot basis on up to 30 school buses at one school. Davidson County Schools has 188 school buses and about 21,000 students. Most of the bus routes average an hour in length, Temple said.
He said that there is no timeline for when the new radio programming will start, but he is hoping to have the system in place this school year.
Temple heard about BusRadio during the N.C. Pupil Transportation Association conference this year and started researching the company. He then talked to Superintendent Fred Mock about it before presenting the idea to the school board earlier this month.
BusRadio operates similarly to satellite radio, with programming streaming by a wireless network into radio units on each bus. The units are also equipped with GPS and an emergency panic button tied to emergency services. The units provide specific programming for elementary-, middle- and high-school students as well as students on field trips.
BusRadio has run up against controversy. The National Parent Teacher Association has opposed BusRadio, and 40 nonprofit consumer, religious and education groups have signed a letter urging Verizon and other companies not to advertise on BusRadio’s airwaves, according to a New York Times article.
“It advertises itself as a service to deliver radio programming to kids,” said Robert Weissman, the managing director for Commercial Alert, a nonprofit based in Washington that has criticized the company. “What BusRadio is, is a means of delivering a captive audience of children to advertisers.”
Children have little choice about whether they attend school or ride on a school bus, Weissman said.
Mock said he has gotten e-mails from national child-advocacy organizations and residents who had concerns about BusRadio. Inabinett is looking into those issues, he said.
“We’re sensitive to anything that might be a liability to the board,” Mock said.
Steven Shulman, a co-founder of BusRadio, said that bus drivers and students always have the option of turning off BusRadioff. And BusRadio offers far less advertising than regular radio, he said. BusRadio offers an average of eight minutes of public-service announcements and sponsorships, Shulman said.
Other child-advocacy groups have criticized playing music from such artists as rapper Timbaland. Shulman said that a content review board has set up guidelines for the music that is played.
The only music that BusRadio would play by an artist such as Timbaland are songs stripped of any references to sex, drugs or violence. BusRadio plays nomusic with profanity, Shulman said.
“We don’t play anything that’s explicit,” he said. “We’ll even take out the word ‘hell’ or ‘heck.’”
And what’s played in Chicago isn’t necessarily played in Davidson County, he said. The radio programming is tailored to each district, Shulman said.
Temple said that his obligation is to make sure that the children who ride the buses are safe. “We’re not here to do things that are damaging to kids,” he said.