Tech Talk with Zūm: Reimagining Student Mobility

July 13, 2026

RENO, Nev. – During a Monday session at STN EXPO West, Vivek Garg, COO of Zūm who previously spent 11 years as an army officer, spoke on his drive “to make transportation a better experience for our students.” He appraised the school bus industry’s traditional prioritization of on-time performance, sharing the story of Priya, a student whose pre-test anxiety was rooted in bus uncertainty, to illustrate why Zūm now prioritizes the “ready to learn” metric.

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Drawing on a study by NORC at the University of Chicago, he revealed that 54 percent of students experience transportation-related anxiety, resulting in 55 billion lost instructional minutes and $15 billion in annual losses – despite school buses moving 26 million students daily, making it the nation’s largest mass transit system and the second-largest ticket item in district budgets.

Zūm’s Connected Mobility Experience (CMX™), deployed in 18 states and supporting 139 million bus rides, unifies students, families, drivers, dispatchers, operations managers, board members and superintendents. The platform democratizes bus ride feedback, enabling parents to rate rides even if they don’t speak English – amassing 1.7 million ratings with a 4.9-star average – and achieves over 98 percent on-time performance.

In Kansas City Public Schools, Zūm CMX drove an 86 percent decrease in transportation-related absenteeism, a 2.5 percent increase in attendance, a 150 percent rise in athletics and field trip participation, improved graduation rates, and a leap in daily ridership from 4,900 to 9,100 out of 10,000 students.

“When your transportation becomes reliable, when a family knows that this bus ride is going to happen or that they can plan when there is an issue, these are the outcomes,” Garg explained.

He took attendees on a virtual tour through the Zūm CMX platform, showing how it empowers dispatchers and operations managers with color-coded dashboards that highlight delayed buses, automates standby driver assignment and suggests the best drivers for split routes. Outdated processes involving binders of paper route sheets and text messages to drivers are replaced by real-time driver tablet notifications, including street views of new stops and navigation along familiar routes. Drivers start getting paid when they check-in, and schools receive real-time drop-off updates. The system instantly notifies parents of driver changes, complete with the substitute’s name and years of experience for transparency and reassurance.

Zūm CMX is not a far-off promise but a live, robust solution, used by Boston Public Schools and in complex urban environments like San Francisco, where over 200 school buses run three daily routes back-to-back. By centering the “ready to learn” metric, unifying all stakeholders, and leveraging technology, Zūm eliminates anxiety and transforms transportation into a reliable, connected experience that fosters student success.

“Are you ready to reimagine school transportation systems for your school district?” Garg asked attendees.

Written with the assistance of AI from a live transcript.