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Frederick County Public Schools will wait for better financial times before equipping its buses with brand-new Global Positioning System technology.

Prompted by budget concerns, Board of Education members dismissed a request from the system's transportation department to buy into a $500,000 Global Positioning System program for the school system.

The board discussed the issue on Monday, after a presentation about the Zonar system – the type of GPS system used by schools in Anne Arundel County.

The system would have equipped county school bus drivers with hand-held devices allowing them to check for students on a bus with the wave of a hand.

The devices are equipped with a sensor allowing them to track of individual bus routes, mileage and idle time. They record maintenance needs and bus defects, perform vehicle inspections and keep electronic records of checks and inspections through software. The system can also track down individual buses in case of emergency.

With the system, the transportation department would have been able to upgrade from paper to electronic record-keeping and keep more accurate track of the time it takes for bus drivers to complete their routes.

"We have 10 GPS units for a fleet of 150," Keller said. "We are challenged to stay current."

Keller argued that the new GPS units would streamline transportation, saving the school system $100,000 every year. The savings would have come from reduced overtime pay for mechanics, reduction in paperwork, as well as improved routing and oversight, Keller said.

"This was brought forward because it was a relatively short payback," he said.

Superintendent Linda D. Burgee supported the GPS request and encouraged the transportation department to bring it to the board.

She said she was interested in the potential savings that the new technology offered.

Staff asked the board to consider allocating $500,000 of the school system's budget in 2010, so that the school system could start generating savings as soon as possible.

All seven members of the school board said they were not interested in getting the system at this time. Some of them expressed concerns that the system may not generate as much savings as the transportation department estimated.

Board member Mike Schaden said the system was "nice," but the timing of the request was "terrible."

Board member Donna Crook agreed. "This isn't the year to do it," she said.

Crook said she is willing to work with the transportation department to find other ways to improve operations.

"I am just not convinced that this is the best way to do this now," Crook said of the GPS system. "There are other things that we can do to better ourselves right now."