The advantages of working more efficiently that technology provides pupil transportation professionals, effectively and off-site while also improving student safety and keeping parents in the loop on important information continue to grow, according to industry experts.
School software provider Tyler Technologies has seen the increasing use of smart phones, tablets, laptops and PCs in both the home and the classroom, and advances in technology rely on being responsive to the needs of the users.
“Our ability to bring innovative products to the market is the result of our open communication with our clients,” said Ted Thien, senior vice president and general manager of Tyler’s Versatrans solution. “We consider client feedback in each version of our software, which results in new features and improved use of technology to meet the demands placed on transportation leaders today.”
Technology is being employed to streamline routes, reduce fuel consumption and track vehicle maintenance to stretch budgets farther.
Clifton Pierluissi, director of routing and analytics for Cook-Illinois Corporation, a school bus contractor with about 2,000 vehicles in the Chicago area, said about 85 percent of its vehicles will be routed with Versatrans Routing & Planning and Traversa, either by the company or the districts served. “Our goal is 100 percent by 2016,” he said.
The system’s advantages include generating school arrival reports that managers can view with the click of a button and providing routers and dispatchers with real-time routing data. With Traversa’s tools, routes can be imported from spreadsheets or GPS data. The optimize run tool helps to create efficient runs.
Route sheets are correct the first time, no need to spend time proofreading for small errors in manually typed routes, said Pierluissi, who also worked at Versatrans for nearly seven years. “Route verification and communication is sped up by having everyone in an office tied to the latest and most accurate information. We can answer questions from our customers quickly and confidently. We don’t have to wait for the router to be available because everyone in an office knows how to look up data.”
With Versatrans’ School Interoperability Framework, student information can be updated simultaneously each night for transportation, food services, the library or other departments overnight so they all operate with the same data.
Pierluissi said Cook-Illinois is also working with Versatrans on a payroll auditing system with drivers in a pilot program using Tyler Telematic GPS to capture actual data as they sign in and out.
But, the system streamlined Cook-Illinois’ billing process by combining student and route information, enabling the company to export 99 percent of the necessary data. “We’re spending hours on billing instead of days,” Pierluissi said.
Pierluissi believes the era of the store-everything-in-their-head transportation manager is rapidly coming to a close.
“In this age of technology and liability, this information needs to be in a database. It needs to be stored in the cloud so you don’t have to worry about it,” he said. “Frankly, I’m going to trust a tech company that knows how to store data in a whole warehouse of servers over a small district that keeps everything on one computer in the corner that may get backed up every night but nobody checks.”
Pierluissi said even small districts where efficiencies may be difficult to find still benefit from the latest technology.
“If you’re running four buses, for me to take away one bus — 25 percent of your fleet — just doesn’t make sense,” he said. “But one of the benefits (of routing software) is that it verifies you’re doing a good job. Or, maybe it does save you two miles a day over 180 days on five or six routes and a few minutes of idling every day for each bus. That adds up over a school year.”
He added, “And when you have a large fleet and you’re not using software, it’s a real eye-opener for a lot of people when you overlay routes for the first time with routing software. Often times they say, ‘Wow, we were running two buses almost on top of each other’ or ‘We never, ever thought to run routes the way the software maps them out.’”
Responding to an Emergency
The St. Charles (Louisiana) Parish Public Schools District is now using a mobile safety platform, CrisisManager, developed by SchoolDude in Cary, North Carolina.
CrisisManager provides employees with immediate access to password-protected safety plans through mobile devices. Parents have a different CrisisManager app with information for their use, said Kade Rogers, coordinator of safety, security and emergency preparedness.
The employees’ mobile app delivers instructions for a gamut of emergencies and other situations ranging from an active shooter, bomb threat and evacuation to dangerous weather, school closure or other unusual incident that might occur in the 10,000-student, 1,700-employee district.
Nick Mirisis, SchoolDude’s director of marketing, said the district customized the mobile app to include one-tap emergency calling and the most up-to-date building maps, emergency exits and lockdown locations. He noted one value to transportation staff is able to have emergency protocols instantly at hand even while off-site.
“We have a field trip management solution to streamline to process from the time a teacher puts in a request for a trip to the actual fulfillment with the transportation department,” Mirisis said. One reason that CrisisManager exists is when you take a number of kids away, a number of safety incidents can occur. Whatever protocol exists, every staff person has access to it on their smartphone or mobile device and will know what steps to follow.
Like many tech tools, Mirisis said, users of the field trip app and CrisisManager find their own uses for them. “There are a lot of ideas out there and one of the beauties of technology is that folks often find other applications beyond the intended use.”
Rogers said the app provides bus drivers with action items in the event of an accident or other emergency where they lose radio contact. A modification allows drivers to list the specific location where each student is seated in the event of an accident. “That’s important for a police report,” he said.
“Our district has always been ahead of the curve as far as technology and so we›re trying to stay ahead of it as well,” he said. “Our faculty and staff are the ones who are going to be handling situations in the seconds when an emergency arises. I wanted them to have our safety plans at their fingertips, easy to use and ready to go when something happens.”
DIY
More adventurous transportation professionals might consider following the lead of Derrick Campbell, who is the director of transportation for the Del Norte County Unified School District in Crescent City, California. After assuming the role in 2013 from a long-serving predecessor, Campbell set out to learn as much as possible about ways technology could improve his department’s efficiency and effectiveness.
The Del Norte district had already moved its data to the cloud in June 2013, and Campbell began to research how he could develop software and forms for his department. “Google has an amazing number of tools that are free,” he said. “This allows me to get what I need, specifically, instead of what someone says I need and I control the program.”
Campbell uses Google forms and Excel spreadsheets with formulas he’s developed himself to control content. He relies on computerized programs to track daily mileage and the number of students transported every day. The latter information was once required by the state of California to calculate transportation funding. While that is no longer the case, the district’s leadership continues to value it.
“It helps me in terms of accountability to the board and superintendent,” Campbell said.
Easily tracking the mileage of each bus has been a boon to mechanics, who must service vehicles every 45 days or 3,000 miles to comply with state law. “If today’s mileage is within 500 miles or five days, it shows up in red so we don’t go over service and fall out of compliance,” Campbell explained.
Software that tracks employee training is in the works to automatically disburse a record into the personnel records of each person in attendance.
The Del Norte district, which is largely rural along the Pacific Ocean and about 20 miles south of the border with Oregon, is also conducting a two-route pilot program to track students to and from school. “We’re working with CI Solutions so students will have a bus pass that will be scanned as they get on and off the bus. The driver will have a tablet and the student’s information will come up. It will read green if they ride, red if they don’t,” Campbell said. “It’s pretty basic and straightforward but it’s something we need.”
Campbell “never touched computers” until he was in his late 20s and began his crash course with Microsoft Excel, Google and web-based servers when he assumed his current role. He has even begun to learn how to write programming language.
“There’s so much information out there, you can teach yourself,” he said. “It takes some time and learning, but in the long run, it’s going to save you time. And, you’re going to have more time to train drivers, know routes, know the kids and other things that are more important than manually entering data.”
