Central Indiana Commuter Services is a federally funded program in partnership with the Central Indiana Regional Transportation Authority. The mission of CICS is to offer alternative transportation solutions to employers and commuters in Central Indiana. As we began school this year without general education transportation, many parents sought to find friends and neighbors with whom to share rides to and from school each day. Several parents even formed their own carpooling page on Facebook. When CICS became known to us, it seemed to be the natural fit to assist our families in developing additional options for their children to get to school. CICS has never matched riders on quite the scale that we have attempted and we have created some problems with the implementation of this pilot program.
Parents with an email address available received an initial notice from CICS asking that they access the CICS website and indicate their desire to participate in the program, or to opt out. While this was well intentioned, we erred by continuing the participation of parents and families who did not respond at all. In retrospect this group should have been removed from the match-lists. A second error compounded the problem when a software glitch caused families who indicated they did not wish to participate to be included in the second mailing. This problem has been corrected and those who indicated their wish to not participate have been removed from the database.
The only information shared by CICS was the email addresses of neighbors. Children’s names appeared only to their own parents.
It is our hope that this project still results in families being able to ease the daily commute to school by working with friends and neighbors to share rides. Our future efforts to assist families in this process will ensure that no one is included unless there is an expressed desire to participate.
