No matter what size school district you are, every transportation department needs a system of organization in order to be effective and efficient. You have to juggle several functions, including map and data management, communication with parents and school staff, planning for hybrid class schedules, and accurate reporting of your operations.
It can be overwhelming to manage all these aspects without the proper tools or organizational workflows.
In this Partner Update, we share how the Edulog system and our approach to student transportation planning and management helped Lynchburg City Schools in Virginia recover from a devastating shortage of personnel during school start.
How Can the Edulog System Help Your Transportation Department?
Edulog’s suite of transportation management software integrates and runs all aspects of your student transportation operation – everything from routing and planning, mapping and student data management, to parent communications. It enables you to have greater insight and visibility into your whole operation.
Edulog’s routing system enables your team to create what-if scenarios to stay prepared for alternating schedules, navigate shortages of resources, and quickly develop and implement options to respond to changing circumstances.
Edulog’s GPS software and parent communications app offer districts near real-time visibility into their on-the-road operations and therefore the ability to adjust those operations quickly and meaningfully. With transportation services likely to change frequently and quickly, districts can use Edulog’s Parent Portal and Web Query communication tools to provide timely and up-to-date transportation information to parents and caregivers.
The Edulog system offers everything that you need for safe, efficient, economical student transportation management.
Recovering from Overwhelming Circumstances
In the fall of 2021, Lynchburg City Schools (LCS) was faced with the already significant challenges of providing public education in the midst of an ongoing pandemic; these challenges were further compounded by chronic personnel shortages which ultimately resulted in a lack of preparation and a tumultuous organizational climate for the start of the 2021-2022 school year.
LCS approached Edulog for assistance with several initiatives, including a rollout of web-based communication tools, evaluation of school bell times, and improving route and run effectiveness.
“Their team was an invaluable resource as Lynchburg City Schools struggled through the start of the 2021-2022 school year. Edulog is very fortunate to have such a wonderful team.”
– John Collins, Director of IT, Lynchburg City Schools, Va.
Making Data-Driven Transportation Decisions
Edulog worked with the LCS Transportation Department to assess the district’s challenges, short- and long-term organizational goals, and current processes and procedures.
Edulog assisted the district in developing enhanced workflows that could accommodate their immediate goals and, over time, provide realistic solutions to their problems.
Two experienced members of the Edulog team were deployed on-site to work with the LCS team. They directly trained individual routers and developed reports that could be used to identify potential issues, improve internal district communication, and track the progress of the solutions implemented by Edulog and LCS.
Support through the School Year
“The support that we have received from Edulog has been phenomenal,” stated John Collins, the director of IT at Lynchburg City Schools. “During the week of on-site assistance, Edulog’s team did an outstanding job of identifying opportunities for improvement in our procedures and training. They worked quickly to fill the gaps that we had and their Account Managers were an amazing liaison for us when communicating our needs back to Edulog. They were personable and friendly. They had conversations with employees in all of the roles at LCS Transportation to get a better understanding of how we worked and what we needed.”
While you can’t predict with any certainty what school start will bring, a fundamental part of being ready for the unexpected is to ensure that you have good basic business practices in place so that when the unexpected happens, you have a solid foundation to build on. The Edulog Service Level Management Team will continue to work with LCS through the school year to help build on the initial accomplishments and further develop successful workflows.
Why Choose Edulog?
What makes the Edulog system so valuable to school districts like yours is that it supports all phases of transportation administration: planning, managing, communicating, reporting, decision-making, and more.
This integration of all functions is crucial to ensuring that districts can meet the challenges facing them today: knowing what school buses are doing at all times, communicating that information to parents and schools, and creating new transportation plans to accommodate changing circumstances.
