FirstView

First Student Inc.

About this app

Designed with parents, for parents – FirstView®, powered by First Student, makes you a part of your student’s journey. To school. From school. Every day.

FirstView® is your resource for knowing the location of your student’s bus, estimated arrival times at your student’s stop and when your student’s bus arrives or departs their school. FirstView® is a partnership between First Student and the school districts we serve, bringing increased transparency and communication about the school bus for students and their families. Currently, FirstView® is only available to a small number of school districts but we are working hard to offer it to as many districts as possible! Please contact your school district or our FirstView® support team if you would like to know if FirstView® is available for you.

Dedicated Customer Support
• Contact FirstView® Monday – Friday by:
- Calling the toll-free phone number 888-889-8920 from 7:00 a.m. EST to 5:00 p.m. EST;
- Emailing Customer Support at [e-mail]; or
- Using the in-app messaging to provide feedback.

Live Tracking
• The FirstView® map screen shows you the live location and direction of your student’s bus, your student's stop schedule for the current day and timestamps for school arrivals and departures.

Predictive Stop Arrival Times
• Analyzing route and real-time GPS data, we determine an estimated time of arrival to your stop provided on the FirstView® map.

Custom Alerts and Messages
• Set up push or email notifications alerting you when your student's bus is a chosen distance or number of minutes away from your stop.
• Receive push messages about why your student’s bus is late and an estimation of how long it will be delayed.

Multi-Stop View
• Buses for all your students can be tracked with FirstView®. Using individual colors for each student, every selected stop appears on the map simultaneously for easy viewing and differentiation.

Additional User Notifications
• The main user of the FirstView® app can connect three additional email accounts to receive email alerts.

Secure and Easy Access
• FirstView® requires a password-protected account along with your student’s ID for app set-up. This way, only you can view your student’s stop.
• Register and log-in from your smartphone, tablet or desktop.

Ratings and reviews

Maybe 1.5 stars - tops. I've been using this app for a whole school year. Top complaints: It's not accurate, there's a big lag, it's often disconnected from GPS, updates are delivered well after they're helpful. Every day (not exaggerating) it will say the bus is 10-12 minutes out when it drives past our house. The drop-off will go from that 10-12 min to "arrived" with less than 1 minute having passed. I will watch the bus go by while the app says it's still on a different street, and that's if the map is connected at all. Updates about the bus being late or having a different driver often come through HOURS after it's relevant information. If you were truly counting on this app for accurate information, you'd be in a rough spot.

It's average. It kinda works sometimes. The interface isn't great but it's kinda functional. I don't trust the app because it only notifies me maybe 50% of the time. Yes, I know how to configure the app and handle notifications, I'm "tech-savvy". That being said, the issue could be with the bus company, i.e. Yhe app isn't getting accurate information from the source. But that shouldn't be my problem. And the interface looks dated, reminds of very early Android apps.

ETAs are not accurate. Every other review that mentions incorrect ETAs or wrong GPS locations is right. There is a map, it does have the correct location of the school and my house, but what happens in between those two places is anybody's guess. The idea and potential of this app is so great, however, in its current state the execution is horrendous.

What's new

Resolved issue with map searches