“Further, there is a major time commitment as staff
must learn a new system while still conducting ev- eryday business on the current system,” he continued. “Therefore, the project timeline must be meticulously maintained by the project manager and communicat- ed to all involved parties. As one can imagine, there are several factors and personnel which must be considered in order to ensure the project is a success.” Greg Jackson, general manager of school bus services
for EverDriven, said districts should often plan anywhere from a month to six months between an RFP award and a system running at full capacity. “Though the range depends heavily on district size and the tool itself. Data cleanup is usually the biggest factor,” he said. “Student rosters, addresses and route histories tend to carry years of small errors that never matter until a new system must make sense of them, and that work almost always takes longer than districts budget for.” Jackson added that staff enablement is the second ma-
jor factor. Dispatchers and routers need real time to build confidence in a new tool, not just a single walkthrough before go-live. “Back-to-school timing compresses that window further,” he explained, “since most districts want a new system to go live well before the first day.” Vendor support can speed things up considerably
when the vendor treats onboarding as an ongoing part- nership rather than a one-time handoff, he continued. Districts also shorten their own timeline by bringing in outside routing expertise before a new tool goes live, rather than redesigning bus, van, and alternative trans- portation routes separately while also standing up new technology at the same time. “When those pieces are planned as one coordinated system instead of several disconnected ones, a lot of the friction that normally appears in mid-deployment simply never happens,” Jackson, a former transportation director for Jefferson County Schools in Colorado, concluded. Sean McCormack is the chief information and AI
officer at First Student. He said the school bus contractor takes a phased approach to introducing and testing new technology while maintaining reliable transportation. “With HALO, our proprietary technology platform that
delivers AI-powered alerts and predictive insights, we put a user-centric approach called testFirst at the core of development,” said McCormack, who was recognized in September by TIME magazine as a 2026 Executive of the Year for tech and data for the rollout. “Our team worked closely with drivers, dispatchers, district leaders, safety teams and families to understand the real-world chal- lenges they were facing day-to-day. Their insights helped
us build a platform that addressed those challenges while remaining intuitive, practical and easy to adopt.” He shared that by deploying pilot programs that val-
idate training, user testing and feedback, First Student may then refine solutions before broader deployment. “I think it’s critical to engage stakeholders early to build alignment and drive better adoption across the orga- nization,” he added. “Senior leadership participation and support are also important when it comes to these major tech rollouts. For us, our BrightPath change management program also helped align our teams and accelerate adoption, particularly during critical periods like back-to-school.”
Installed! Now What? Common questions asked by many after complex technology projects are: “Okay now what?” “Is it a suc- cess?” “Is it being used?” “Are we truly seeing the horizon of a return on our investment?” As important as the nuances of implementing technol- ogy is the utilization of it by dispatchers, drivers, routers, mechanics, parents and administrators. The utilization of the technology may be monitored by looking at metrics such as parent app downloads, on-time performance, routing efficiency, maintenance data, reduced call vol- ume, and other indicators. “For a router, that could mean using live GPS data to
adjust routes instead of relying on estimates,” said Chris Jackson, head of public sector business at Geotab. “For a mechanic, it could mean acting on predictive fault information before a bus breaks down and leaves stu- dents stranded. For dispatchers, drivers and mechanics, districts should examine active use by role rather than simply counting logins.” More specifically, he suggested useful measures such
as: Daily active use among dispatchers, drivers, routers and mechanics; parent app download and retention rates; on-time performance; a trend in “Where is my child’s bus?” calls; miles and operating hours saved through route optimization; fuel savings; and mainte- nance alerts acted on before vehicles break down. “Parent app retention can be especially revealing,” he
added. “Many districts see strong initial downloads fol- lowed by a drop in use, whereas continued use indicates that parents find the information accurate and useful.” Richard Casto, the director of transportation for
Jackson County Schools in Ripley, West Virginia, said a new Zonar data platform tracks many performance and operational features, including an accountability app that parents can use. How data is used is a key indicator. Jackson County tracks how many parents use the app.
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