Guilford County Schools Test Mobile Thermometer App Ahead Of School Year

Guilford County Schools officials are testing a new app that could make boarding a school bus or entering a school building easier whenever students return to in-person learning.

The smartphone app takes a student's temperature. The result can be shown to a bus driver or school official. Guilford County Schools leaders say the technology would ease some of the burden on its employees, as required COVID-19 safety measures are implemented. It would also help cut down on thousands of pieces of paper each day from additional forms.

“All of us are going to have many concerns about this new normal we are going to live in, but we aren't going to have a lot of options available to us because we don't have a lot of excess staff, which is the problem here,” says Superintendent Sharon Contreras. “In an ideal world, we would have an additional person on the bus.”

Contreras says the app can even be customized so a school principal can see that everyone on the bus has been screened.

“It's easy,” she says. “And perhaps we can get it down where the bus driver might only have to do a quick temperature check for small children who don't have cell phones or whose parents aren't standing at the bus stop with them.”

The district says it's working with the software company to get a cost estimate for the 73,000 students and 10,000 employees it serves.

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