Charles County Public Schools has added a school locator feature to its Web site.

School Locator is designed to allow the public to enter an address and see which three schools – elementary, middle and high – an address is zoned for. It also indicates if the address is eligible for bus transportation to a particular school.

There are two sides to the school locator, one for the public and one for school system staff. The public can access school locator at www2.ccboe.com/schoollocator/ and click on launch application (Public). No password is needed.

School locator works by matching the user query against a database of roads in Charles County and the schools that road is zoned for. The Charles County Public Schools transportation department sets the zones by using polygons in the software.

In the future, this service will allow school principals to see a list of buses traveling to their school, which students are on that bus and the approximate time of each stop that bus makes before reaching the school.

The service also expedites some of the manual tasks for schools system staff. It will help in the process of creating bus route packets at the beginning of the school year.