44,000 School Buses Use “FirstACTS” To Secretly Identify And Track The Behavior of 5 Million Students

A Scottish company called FirstGroup uses 44,000 First Student school buses to secretly monitor the behavior of more than 5 million students.

First Student school buses come equipped with mirror grids,Wi-Fi, two-way radios and surveillance cameras.

Just as the transportation industry continuously improves passenger bus safety, we at First Student also look for ways to improve driver safety and comfort and bus drivability. The First Student school bus isn’t what you saw on the road five years ago; it’s more advanced, comfortable and reliable.

What makes First Student school bus surveillance so “advanced, comfortable and reliable”? Is their ability to record and track an individual student’s behavior in real-time.

All of First Student’s 44,000 school buses come equipped with their proprietary “Active Conduct Tracking System” or FirstACTS.

FirstACTS- School bus behavior active conduct tracking system

According to FirstACTS, they provide administrators with student misbehavior trend data and a student’s individual behavior history as soon as they step onto a school bus.

The types of things a student can be reported for reads like an inmate information handbook.

According to the video, FirstACTS allows administrators to file incident reports for things like “student insubordination, excessive talking, profanity, eating or drinking and possession of injurious articles.” Which is defined as “bringing articles of injurious or objectionable nature aboard the bus,” whatever that means.