MISSOULA, Mont. – Education Logistics, Inc. (EDULOG) announced today that the Merced County Office of Education (MCOE) based in Merced, CA has signed a contract for the purchase of EDULOG’s integrated transportation routing and scheduling, global positioning (GPS), and student tracking system – all part of EDULOG’s broad range of transportation management solutions for the K-12 school market.
The agreement includes software licenses, GPS hardware, Mobile Data Terminals (MDT) for student tracking, related professional services, maintenance, and support. The District has invested in EDULOG’s edulog.nt routing and scheduling system, EduTracker GPS-based routing system, RunEditor GPS-based run planning tool, UnitManagement remote hardware control tool, and StudentTracker ridership monitoring system.
MCOE is an intermediary agency between the California Department of Education and the school districts in Merced County. It helps Merced County’s 20 school districts serve more than 55,000 K-12 students.
MCOE published a Request for Proposals in October 2008 for a system that would include software, GPS and student tracking hardware, equipment installation services, software implementation services, system training, continuing support and data services. The routing and scheduling system was required to integrate with the existing student information system as well as the proposed AVL/GPS/Student Tracking system, be capable of multi-day/multidestination routing, have proven mathematical run/route optimization capabilities, and allow for special needs students to be assigned to specific vehicles with the necessary equipment and
support staff. The GPS/AVL system was required to offer at least 12 sensor inputs for events such as emergency flashers and door switches, track vehicle locations compared to planned activities (such as driving path, stop sequencing, and arrival/departure times) contained in the routing and scheduling databases, and store historical data for both actual and planned activity for no less than one year. The student tracking system required the use of MDTs capable of recording and displaying student information, driver directions, and passenger lists from the
information stored in the routing and scheduling system. MCOE required the entire system to be hosted remotely. After a thorough review of the responses, MCOE awarded the project to EDULOG.
“EDULOG was the only company I could find capable of providing a fully integrated solution that combines routing and scheduling, GPS/AVL tracking, and student tracking all in one single end-to-end system,” stated Kraig Magnussen, MCOE’s Chief Operations Officer.
“EDULOG’s solution uniquely provides MCOE with full, two-way data communication capabilities between all 3 components of the system in real time. No other company was able to offer a complete solution that met all our specialized needs,” Magnussen added.
“EDULOG is proud to be the only company that offers proven routing and scheduling software combined with a fully integrated GPS/AVL and student tracking system for the Pupil Transportation market. Many separate companies have attempted to combine their systems to achieve similar goals, but none can compare to the results already achieved by EDULOG. We welcome MCOE to the EDULOG family of clients and are confident the system will satisfy the needs,” commented Mike Darling, president of EDULOG.
“EDULOG’s student tracking system that utilizes the MDT is particularly well suited for tracking special education students. SPED routes change frequently, often daily, so the ability to push accurate planned data from the routing system out to the bus at the right times is of paramount importance. Drivers have access to a wealth of pertinent information at their fingertips and dispatch can know in real time the status of each child transported such that student safety and
security is ensured,” added Darling.
EDULOG offers the industry’s only GPS-based routing and scheduling solution available from a single vendor. Seamless, real time, two-way data communication between the different components offers numerous unique benefits for cost savings and increased safety when expanding the system to include student tracking. The ability of the system to automatically compare the planned pick up times for each student with the actual real world data is an intrinsic and unique benefit of the system that allows dispatch to manage by exception. As a result, the
system calls attention to issues that require focus rather than requiring users to proactively seek out potential problems. Operators can be alerted when a child boards or exits the bus at an unassigned location, and have positive identification for who is onboard a bus in the event of an emergency.
Education Logistics, Inc. (EDULOG) is recognized as the industry leader of Pupil Transportation solutions since 1978 with an estimated 150,000+ school buses routed by its clients each day. EDULOG partners with K-12 school districts to provide total transportation management systems including true GIS planning and scheduling software, efficiency and optimization studies, guaranteed cost savings plans, GPS-based routing software, student tracking, driver payroll, vehicle inspection, boundary planning, enrollment projection, field trip management, fleet maintenance, innovative ASP solutions for small districts, and a comprehensive selection of Internet-based products. EDULOG uniquely combines its powerful software with ongoing consulting services from the industry’s largest source of such expertise. For more information about EDULOG, visit www.edulog.com.
