Josh Nease never imagined that pen and paper could feel like an artifact of the past, but in his 24th year in transportation, it did.
During his career in transportation, he would go through “a lot of forms, one at a time” and receive “a lot of input from the drivers,” he recalled.
“They would sit down with us and go over their routes and we’d make adjustments,” Nease said.
For years, it worked well enough, but “well enough” had begun to fray at the edges.
This year marked a turning point at Pleasant Local School District: a bold leap from analog to digital. A new routing software – something the district had flirted with for years but never quite embraced—was now fully implemented.
Transfinder’s award-winning Routefinder PLUS has been a game changer.
Pleasant Local School District is located in Marion, Ohio, a city of about 36,000 located about 50 miles north of Columbus. The district has 1,300 students and transports 700 of them via a two-tier system. Nease had inherited the role of Transportation Supervisor from Tom Haley, his predecessor of 15 years. It was Haley who had planted the seeds of change.
“We’d been talking about doing something like this for two or three years,” Nease said. “We just couldn’t find something that was really the right fit for what we needed that we could afford in our budget.”
It wasn’t until a new superintendent, Tom McDonald, entered the scene that those seeds began to sprout. McDonald, who had come from a larger district equipped with routing software, quickly recognized inefficiencies. Personally overhearing dispatchers and staff converse over the radio to determine routes and stops for students, McDonald was even more on board to find a software solution.
The district looked at three or so companies before deciding Transfinder was the best choice.
“The others didn’t seem to flow,” Nease said. “The ease of use just didn’t seem to be there.” Helping to confirm the decision was the fact that several neighboring districts were happy Transfinder clients.
By the time Nease officially took the reins, the plan was already in motion. Last year his team spent time training, building, and beta-testing Transfinder’s award-winning Routefinder PLUS routing system. Now, for the first time, they had a tool that could streamline transportation for the district’s 1,300 students, about 700 of whom relied on the buses daily.
Beyond Routefinder PLUS, the district added Transfinder’s award-winning Stopfinder parent app and Viewfinder, a tool to monitor day-to-day operations and access student ridership information, such as student bus information.
As Nease settled into the new system, the changes were immediate. The 2024-2025 school year was the first school year utilizing the Transfinder technology.
“It’s given the buildings easier access to things. They’re not constantly calling over to the garage for bus stop information,” he said. “The secretaries can get on and look at it. It’s been very, very helpful.”
Routefinder PLUS led to one smoothest openings in recent memory.
“It’s just made things run a lot smoother than they did in the past,” Nease said.
What made this school year’s opening so smooth? Learn more here.
