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

I found the account setup to be a bit tedious. The worst latest "feature" (bug) I have found is that I have to completely log in again every time I open the app. It can't even remember the state and school district. Super annoying and not user friendly. My child's bus location and estimated time is not the most accurate. Location is usually delayed by about a few minutes, sometimes just off to the point the app provides no value.

When the app works correctly then it's great! Most of the time I don't get the notifications that I've set up. And if they substitute another bus for the route then they have to update the bus in the tracking system for the app to work right. Also the scheduled pick up and drop off times don't match the actual times of the route. Definitely some fixes need to be made.

Half the time the app doesn't work in that the bus "location" is in the next city over. The timing isn't very accurate, either. There's always some sort of glitch that the transportation company hasn't seen before or can't troubleshoot. Overall not very reliable. Hopefully the developers figure it out because it could be a great app.

What's new

Minor bug fixes and improvements