Early 1990s task force in Oklahoma was prophetic in imagining today’s school bus technology


When visionaries look for solutions to problems, they brain-


storm and research until their vision comes to fruition. In the early 1990s, two men involved in pupil transportation in the state of Oklahoma started talking about what the school bus of the future might look like. Teir initial vision was to make beneficial use of the time


students spent on a school bus and monetize the bus fleet by offering transportation services to the private sector for revenue purposes. It all started with philosophical discussions in Mike Brown’s ga-


rage with Randy McLerran. At the time, McLerran was the state director at the Oklahoma Department of Education, and Brown was director of transportation for Oklahoma City Public Schools. From these conversations, McLerran launched a task force in February 1992 that embodied broad representation of both public and private school bus sectors as well as representatives outside the industry. Te task force consisted of 21 members drawing from local taxpayers, technology experts, business own- ers, school administrators and even a representative of the state’s commission on children and youth. For the next year, they brainstormed ideas on how to best use


school buses for community development, economic develop- ment, adult education, community mass transit and para-transit services as well as to better prepare students to learn and to address transportation barriers to receiving an education. Tere was special consideration of building co-ops and inter-local agreements be- tween school districts and other entities. On top of all that was the idea to develop the school bus as a mobile classroom for the future and incorporate safety features like real-time GPS monitoring. “Trough our meetings, we were able to energize people who


had never given a yellow bus a second thought, provoked peo- ple to consider using technology to enhance safety and move transportation from an ancillary aspect to a legitimate aspect of the educational process,” said McLerran, who retired from the Oklahoma Department of Education in 2010 and is now a trans- portation specialist with dealer National Bus Sales. Te task force also looked at contemporary technology as well


as innovations they knew to be in development. Tis drove the concept of an interactive classroom on wheels. Te final goal was to convert excess student ride times into productive and accredited educational time. Te results, presented in a June 1993 School Transportation News article and at the 1994 STN EXPO Conference, caused shock waves throughout the school transportation community. “After Bill Paul from STN ran the first article, I was at NAPT


in Albuquerque. A contractor was quoting me (during a pre- sentation) and really didn’t agree. Te hot topic was cost,” said McLerran. “Te other (conclusion) of the task force is that we have to open up the school bus for non-traditional uses…folks said we can’t wear our buses out. I pointed out that trucks often do dual duty, and we could accommodate adults if buses had


variable seating geometry with some form of track seating.” “We developed the concept of the bus as a mobile classroom for


the future,” added Brown, who is now the director of transportation for Norman Public Schools. “We looked at contemporary technol- ogy and the technology that we knew to be in development and how to use those technologies to create an inter-active classroom on wheels; to convert wasted student ride-time into productive and accredited educational time.” Te task force aimed to solve problems that members had en-


countered, including “wasted” learning potential for students who rode a bus for up to four hours a day and other school buses that sat idle in transportation yards that could otherwise bring in much needed revenue. One of their biggest challenges would turn out to be selling their ideas to the transportation community. “Te contents of the task force report/study was simply outside


the box,” said Brown, who is the sixth Peter J. Grandolfo Memorial Award of Excellence winner. “School districts are territorial bod- ies with historically little desire to co-operate or share with others. Interestingly, many of our suggestions would have proven to be revenue generators, or at the very least, revenue neutral. Te final outcome? By and large it laid gathering dust and was ignored.” After his retirement in 2010, McLerran had no idea his task force


report would become victim to a paper shredder. It seems there was no room for a document archive once he had moved on.


THE AGE OF THE INTERNET Still, the 1993 task force was on to something. It provided


some long-term solutions, but technology in 1993 was nowhere near today’s high-tech levels. Few companies, much less school districts, even had websites. “Te Internet was in its infancy, so were laptop computers. Te


only connectivity we could do was through cellphones and that was cost-prohibitive,” said McLerran. “Back then, you didn’t dare give out your cellphone number because then your bill would go up.” Resulting from this task force, Brown in the mid-1990s piloted


a computer-based tracking system via a transmitter on the bus. Tis system showed where the bus was and how fast it was going, information that was transmitted back to the district through a cellphone network. “It was incredibly expensive and was the precursor to GPS.


One of the concrete recommendations we made was to use GPS in the future to show where the bus was,” added McLerran. “Tis was when GPS was first being released by the military. In fact a lot of people didn’t even know what GPS was.” Tere’s no doubt GPS has also grown by leaps and bounds


since the early 1990s, and now this technology can track students getting on and off the bus along with bus location in real-time. Drivers can also hit a panic button when visual proof is needed for incidents that take place in and around the bus. With safety being the No. 1 concern for parents and pupil transportation fleets, GPS has become an integral necessity for all school buses


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