Abstract: An advance notification system (10) and method for notifying school children of the impending arrival of their school bus (19). The system includes an on-board vehicle control unit (12) for each bus (19) and a base station control unit (14) for making telephone calls to the homes (29) of school children in order to inform them that the bus (19) is a certain time period away from a bus stop. The vehicle control unit (12) compares elapsed time to the programmed scheduled time for each bus stop to determine if the bus (19) is on schedule. If the bus (19) is behind or ahead of schedule, the vehicle control unit (12) calls the base station control unit (14), which then resets its calling schedule accordingly.